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Barrel cutter design and toolpath planning for high-efficiency machining of freeform surface

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Abstract

Improvement of machining efficiency is always one of the most interesting problems in CNC machining. Traditionally, the ball-end cutter is widely used in sculptured surface machining for the highly flexible controllability. But the process efficiency is low especially for freeform surface machining, which generally needs multiple tool-paths. To improve the machining efficiency of multi-axis flank milling of freeform surface, a novel barrel cutter design method is proposed in this paper. There are two principle parameters determining the revolution surface of the barrel cutter: the radius of the generatrix curve and the maximum rotating radius. The main work in this paper is to calculate the two parameters for strip-width-maximization machining without local over-gouging. Firstly, the curvature properties are introduced by the geometry model of the barrel cutter. Then the contact condition between the barrel cutter and the freeform surface is analyzed, relationship between cutter parameters and surface curvature is derived. To avoid the over-gouging, based on the curvature constraint, the designed surface is fitted into the cutter surface by surface approximation theory, so that the cutter surface can approach to the designed surface as close as possible. After that, toolpath planning method for milling of freeform surface with the barrel cutter is presented. Finally, machining implementations are presented to verify the effectiveness of the proposed method.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Key Laboratory of Contemporary Design and Integrated Manufacturing Technology, Ministry of Education, Northwestern Polytechnical University, Xi’an, China

    Ming Luo, Dongqing Yan, Baohai Wu & Dinghua Zhang

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  1. Ming Luo
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  2. Dongqing Yan
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  3. Baohai Wu
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  4. Dinghua Zhang
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Correspondence to Ming Luo.

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Luo, M., Yan, D., Wu, B. et al. Barrel cutter design and toolpath planning for high-efficiency machining of freeform surface. Int J Adv Manuf Technol 85, 2495–2503 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00170-015-8113-z

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00170-015-8113-z

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