Automatic tool path generation for parametric surfaces

Abstract EN

A tool path generation algorithm has been proposed and implemented in the presented work.

The aim of the development of tool path algorithm is to machine parametric surface with a given tolerance and scallop height.

The algorithm proposes dividing the desired parametric surface toseveral linear segments depending on the desired accuracy of the parametric surface.

The B-spline technique has been used to generate the requireddata of the parametricsurface.

After generating the tool path, the cutter movement hasbeen simulatedallowing to reduce the cuttingtime and cost.The tool path is verified on the C-TEK CNC milling machine by machining six models.

Various tool path strategies are also discussed and compared with the developed algorithm.

The machining performance includesmachining time;dimensional accuracy and surface roughness were measured for result evaluation.A measuring method has been proposed and implemented to measure the accuracy of the final3D models.

A Digital 3D-Touch Probe was used.

The statistical methodof errorassessmentand similarity factor hasbeen implemented in this work to show the efficiency of the proposed works.

The results showed that the similarity factor of the proposed works were (87.6%) for one model, and (85.9%), (89.6%) for other models.

Matlab (v.7.1), UG-NX8.5, and VERCUT software have been used in this workfor implementation.

A comparison between the proposed method andUG-NX8 hasbeen done to present the flexibility of the proposed method.