Rolling-ball method and contour marching approach to identifying critical regions for complex surface machining

摘要

This paper presents a surface analysis method thatincludes a rolling-hall algorithm and a contour marchingalgorithm for identifying the critical regions that are unfeasiblefor machining. For a given cutter size, the algorithmsautomatically identify the regions that are unfeasible for machiningand dichotomize the surface into the critical region and themachinable region. A rolling-ball method is used to find thestarting points of the critical region boundary. A contour marchingmethod is then used to construct the actual boundary of the criticalregions by using the starting points found in the rolling-ballmethod. Different sets of tool paths can be generated for both themachinable region and the critical region. The proposed methodallows manufacturing engineers to use different sizes of cutters tomachine complex surface parts. Computer implementation andillustrative examples are presented in this paper.