Cut distribution and cutter selection for sculptured surface cavity machining

SUMMARY

Sculptured surfaces often appear in mechanical parts of various industrial products as external form or the functional surface and are commonly found in moulds and dies. In this study a sculptured surface is denned by a non-uniform rational B-spline surface that provides the flexibility and freedom for surface description. Work proposed here includes the evaluation of machining information, decision for machining process sequence selection, and automatic cutter selection and path generation. Machining information is first evaluated by using series of hunt planes and calculating geometric shape, and constraints of the machining cavity. A decision on the process sequence in made based on the evaluated machining information. Cutter size is automatically determined by considering geometric constraints, maximum material removal rate in the roughing process, and minimum cutter movement with the required accuracy in the finishing process. Roughing is done by pocketing procedures that consider arbitrary shaped pockets with islands on the cutting planes. Cutter movement and selection are optimized by considering machining conditions on adjacent cutting planes