Abstract
A new method for 5-axis flank computer numerically controlled (CNC) machining is proposed. A set of tappered ball-end-mill tools (aka conical milling tools) is given as the input and the flank milling paths within user-defined tolerance are returned. Thespace of lines that admit tangential motion of an associated truncated cone along a general, doubly curved, free-form surface is explored. These lines serve as discrete positions of conical axes in 3D space. Spline surface fitting is used to generate a ruled surface that represents a single continuous sweep of a rigid conical milling tool. An optimization-based approach is then applied to globally minimize the error between the design surface and the conical envelope. The milling simulations are validated with physical experiments on two benchmark industrial datasets, reducing significantly the execution times while preserving or even reducing the milling error when compared to the state-of-the-art industrial software.
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Acknowledgements
We thank Naiara Ortega who helped with post-process measurements.
Funding
This work was partially supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 61672187), the Shandong Provincial Key Research & Development Project (2018GGX103038) and the Open Project Program of the National Laboratory of Pattern Recognition (NLPR) (201800013). The first and third authors have been supported by the Spanish Ministry of economy (MIMECOR) Implantación de una solución integral para la fabricación y reparación de componentes de turbo maquinaria (Turbo) and by DPl2016-74845-R Estrategias avanzadas de definición de fresado en piezas rotativas integrales, con aseguramiento de requisito de fiabilidad y productividad. The fourth author has been partially supported by the Basque Government through the BERC 2014-2017 program and by Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness MINECO: BCAM Severo Ochoa excellence accreditation SEV-2013-0323.
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Calleja, A., Bo, P., González, H. et al. Highly accurate 5-axis flank CNC machining with conical tools. Int J Adv Manuf Technol 97, 1605–1615 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00170-018-2033-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00170-018-2033-7