Rapid extraction of machined surface data through inverse geometrical solution of tool path information

Official URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s00170-016-8439-1

In the last decades, several process models have been developed for simulation of 5-axis milling cycles, where the simulation results are used for parameter selection or process improvement purposes. However, integrating the process models with milling cycles is not a trivial task especially for tool path modification purposes in 5-axis free-form milling. This is mainly due to the fact that tool path modification requires the machined surface information, i.e. surface location and surface normal vector, to be known. However, this information is not explicitly given in the tool path, i.e. cutter location source (CLS), file. In this paper, a novel and practical approach is proposed to analytically calculate the surface location and surface normal vectors directly from the already generated tool path in the form of CLS file. The proposed approach is applied on representative 5-axis milling cycles, and the results are verified through CAD model comparisons. It is shown that the proposed approach can calculate the machined surface data at a reasonable accuracy depending on the cutter location point density in the tool path file.