Abstract
In mold and die shops, NC machining process mainly affects the quality of the machined surface and the manufacturing time of molds and dies. The estimation of NC machining time is a prerequisite to measure the machining productivity and to generate a process schedule, which generally includes the process sequence and the completion time of each process. It is required to take into account dynamic characteristics in the estimation, such as the ac/deceleration of NC machine controllers. Intensive observations at start and end points of NC blocks show that a minimum feedrate, a key variable in a machining time model, has a close relation to a block distance, an angle between blocks, and a command feedrate. Thus, this study addresses regression models for the minimum feedrate estimation on short and long NC blocks considering these parameters. Furthermore, machining time estimation models by the four types of feedrate behaviors are suggested based on the estimated minimum feedrate. To show the validity of the proposed machining time model, the study compares the estimated with the actual machining time in the sculptured surface machining of several mold dies.
