Abstract
Curved surface parts are widely used in industrial applications and its machining is still a major problem because of the continuously geometric feature variation. When the processing condition is determined, the machining quality and efficiency of curved surface are affected directly by the generation of tool-path, especially by the selection of tool-path parameters including cutting step length and cutting path interval. However, the common selection method for cutting step length and cutting path interval is usually conservative in the tool-path planning process for curved surface parts, so as to affect the machining efficiency. In this way, an optimization method of tool-path parameters for curved surface by the construction of cutter location mesh units is proposed. Based on the cutter location points obtained by constant scallop-height method, the cutter location mesh units are constructed by optimizing cutting step length and cutting path interval, and then the nodes of the cutter location mesh units are taken as the final cutter location points. Take a saddle surface workpiece as an example, the results of simulation and experiment show that the tool-path with the optimized cutting step length and cutting path interval can not only maintain the machining quality but also improve the machining efficiency obviously. These research achievements are of vital importance in tool-path planning for realizing high-quality and high-efficient machining for the curved surface parts.
Article PDF
Similar content being viewed by others
Avoid common mistakes on your manuscript.
References
Sang CP (2004) Sculptured surface machining using triangular mesh slicing. Comput Aided Des 36(3):279–288
Neto HK, Diniz AE, Pederiva R (2016) Tool life and surface roughness in the milling of curved hardened-steel surfaces. Int J Adv Manuf Technol 87(9):2983–2995
He Y, Chen ZT, Xu RF (2016) Research on five-axis flank milling of convex edge surface with a concave cutter. Int J Adv Manuf Technol 86(9):2401–2409
Sun YW, Xu JT, Jin CN, Guo DM (2016) Smooth tool path generation for 5-axis machining of triangular mesh surface with nonzero genus. Comput Aided Des 79:60–74
Zhang X, Zhang J, Zhao WH (2016) A new method for cutting force prediction in peripheral milling of complex curved surface. Int J Adv Manuf Technol 86(1):117–128
Bolaños GS, Bedi S, Mann S (2014) A topological-free method for three-axis tool path planning for generalized radiused end milled cutting of a triangular mesh surface. Int J Adv Manuf Technol 70(9):1813–1825
Elber G, Cohen E (1994) Tool path generation for freeform surface models. Comput Aided Des 26(6):490–496
Kim SJ, Yang MY (2006) A CL surface deformation approach for constant scallop height tool path generation from triangular mesh. Int J Adv Manuf Technol 28(3):314–320
Sun YW, Guo DM, Jia ZY, Wang HX (2006) Iso-parametric tool path generation from triangular meshes for free-form surface machining. Int J Adv Manuf Technol 28(7):721–726
Feng HY, Li HW (2002) Constant scallop-height tool path generation for three-axis sculptured surface machining. Comput Aided Des 34(9):647–654
Yoon JH, Pottmann H, Lee YS (2003) Locally optimal cutting positions for 5-axis sculptured surface machining. Comput Aided Des 35(1):69–81
Lin RS, Koren Y (1996) Efficient tool path planning for machining free-form surfaces. J Eng Ind 118(1):20–28
Teng Z, Feng HY, Azeem A (2006) Generating efficient tool paths from point cloud data via machining area segmentation. Int J Adv Manuf Technol 30(3):254–260
Chu CH, Hsieh HT, Lee CH, Yan CY (2015) Spline-constrained tool-path planning in five-axis flank machining of ruled surfaces. Int J Adv Manuf Technol 80(9):2097–2104
Li M, Zhang LC, Mo JH, Lu Y (2012) Tool-path generation for sheet metal incremental forming based on STL model with defects. Int J Adv Manuf Technol 63(5):535–547
Zhang ZX, Feng YX, Ren BY, Hagiwara I (2016) Exploratory study of spiral NC tool path generation on triangular mesh based on local subdivision. Int J Adv Manuf Technol 83(5):835–845
Chen ZZ, Khan MA (2014) A new approach to generating arc length parameterized NURBS tool paths for efficient three-axis machining of smooth, accurate sculptured surfaces. Int J Adv Manuf Technol 70(5):1355–1368
Moodleah S, Makhanov SS (2015) 5-axis machining using a curvilinear tool path aligned with the direction of the maximum removal rate. Int J Adv Manuf Technol 80(1):65–90
Zhang K, Tang K (2016) Optimal five-axis tool path generation algorithm based on double scalar fields for freeform surfaces. Int J Adv Manuf Technol 83(9):1503–1514
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Ma, Jw., Su, Ww., Jia, Zy. et al. An optimization method of tool-path parameters for curved surface by construction of cutter location mesh units. Int J Adv Manuf Technol 94, 701–710 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00170-017-0867-z
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00170-017-0867-z