COMPUTATIONAL METHOD FOR DETERMINING NC MACHINING PATH ON SCULPTURED SURFACE

NC machining path for spherical cutter can be generated on sculptured surface by many NC programming systems and CAD/CAM softwares. But in practical NC machining process, the spherical cutter is gradually replaced by some non-spherical cutters, such as flat-end cutter. A new method, viz. Point & Interference Method,is presented in this paper so as to evaluate the non-spherical cutter path in NC programming of sculptured surface. As soon as the parametric representation of the sculptured surface is known, the NC machining path on it is determined for the nonspherical cutters.