Calculation of Economic CL Data for Sculptured Surface Machining

자유곡면 절삭을 위한 경제적인 CL 데이타 계산

This paper describes a procedure of generating economic cutter-location(CL) data for the machining of sculptured surfaces on a multi-axis NC milling machine. Measures of economy are the machining time (cutter move distance) and the length of NC tape (number of CL data points). The presented procedure minimizes both the number of CL data and the total distance of cutter moves, for a given cutter (spherical end-mill) size and parameteric cutting direction, while satisfying given tolerance requirements. The procedure has been implemented in FORTRAN for a smooth composite Bezier surface. The maximum allowable cutter size is calculated by the program so that a user can choose a cutter size. CL data can be generated in both parametric directions u and v. Experimental results show that there are significant differences between the parametric directions, and that cutter size should be as large as possible in order to minimize the cutting time and NC tape length.