A Curve-Based Approach for Clean-up Machining

Abstract

This paper presents a new efficient and robust tool-path generation methods for clean-up machining by employing a curve-based approach. The clean-up machining to be discussed in this paper are pencil-cut and fillet-cut for a polyhedral model of the STL form with a ball-end mill. The pencil-cut and fillet-cut paths are obtained from the curve-based scanning tool paths on the xz, yz, and xy planes. The scanning tool path has exact sharp-concave points and bi-contact vectors, both of which are very useful to detect ‘pencil-points’, trace the pencil-cut path, and generate the fillet-cut path. In the paper, some illustrative examples are provided, and the characteristics of the proposed method are discussed.

Keywords:

• clean-up machining
• fillet-cut
• pencil-cut
• curve-based approach