SPIRAL TOOL PATH PLANNING USING ECCENTRIC PARAMETERS

摘要

Free-form surfaces can be machined continuously with minimum tool retractions and at the high speed by following a spiral tool path. This paper presents an improved planning method of the spiral tool path using eccentric parameters for machining free-form surfaces. The relationship between a 3D machined surface and the 2D circular region is established through the conformal mapping. In order to generate an even path, eccentric parameters are used in 2D parametric circular regions to optimize the path interval. The proposed method produces planar spiral segments as a diagonal curve between every two adjacent parametric tool paths. A 2D spiral tool path is gained by linking spiral segments in sequence. Inverse mapping of the 2D spiral tool path onto the machined surface generates the 3D spiral tool path. The main processes of the proposed method include reducing dimensions of free-form surfaces, calculating the eccentric parametric tool path, and generating the planar diagonal spiral tool path. Some applications are used to verify the proposed methods. The proposed method allows the start point to be arbitrary and generates more even tool paths than the existing methods by introducing the mapping distortion.