Process planning for five-axis milling of sculptured surfaces

Abstract

This thesis studies the automated process planning for finish cut of sculptured surfaces using a 5-axis milling machine. The objective is to automatically carry out the process planning tasks, including cutter selection and tool-path generation, in an integrated and efficient way based on the concept of cutter accessibility. Firstly, a unique algorithm is developed to evaluate the accessibility of a cylindrical fillet-end cutter to a surface point irrespective to the feeding direction. Secondly, an intelligent method is developed to select the optimal cutter from the available ones by checking cuttera??s accessibility to the sampled points on a given part surface. Two techniques, surface decomposition and accessibility comparison between cutters, are presented to alleviate the extensive computation load. Thirdly, by using the checking results in cutter selection, efficient algorithms are developed for the tasks in tool-path generation, including determining the path direction and generating the cutter location (CL) data. Finally, computer implementation and illustrative examples are performed to demonstrate the validity, efficacy and robustness of the developed methods.