Tool path generation for five-axis sculptured surface machining with a toroidal cutter

摘要

This paper presents an algorithm to generate tool paths for five-axis sculptured surface machining with a toroidal cutter based on optimal tool position and orientation. The toroidal cutting surface offers a large range of radius of curvatures. Furthermore, the cutter orientation varies depending on the curvature of surface. Thus, the proposed method is much better than the conventional method with a fixed orientation. To verity the usefulness of the developed algorithm, a computer simulation program is coded using C++ language. The proposed method can be integrated into CAM systems to improve five-axis sculptured surfaces machining.