Higher Efficiency Modeling of Surface Location Errors by Using a Multi-scale Milling Simulation

The dynamic process behavior during milling often leads to vibrations or even chatter and, thereby, to surface location errors. In this paper, a multi-scale simulation system is presented, which can predict these errors efficiently by combining a dexel-based workpiece representation with a CSG-based process model and an oscillator-based system for the process dynamics. The different modeling techniques are described, and the run-time of the combined system is compared to a single-scale system in which the CSG-based model is used for every process step. Furthermore, the simulation is validated by examining the generated surface of a micromachined workpiece.