Cutting force and machine kinematics constrained cutter location planning for five-axis flank milling of ruled surfaces

•Tool position is bounded with respect to the geometrical machining error.•Cutting force and kinematics during five-axis flank milling process are analyzed.•An incremental adaptive flank milling tool path generation algorithm is proposed.•Feed rate is smoothly assigned respecting cutting force and kinematic constraints.

Five-axis flank milling has been commonly used in the manufacturing of complex workpieces because of its greater productivity than that of three-axis or five-axis end milling. The advantage of this milling operation largely depends on effective cutter location planning. The finished surface sometimes suffers from large geometrical errors induced by improper tool positioning, due to the non-developability of most ruled surfaces in industrial applications. In addition, a slender flank-milling cutter may be deflected when subjected to large cutting forces during the machining process, further degrading the surface quality or even breaking the cutter. This paper proposes a novel tool path planning scheme to address those problems. A simple but effective algorithm is developed to adaptively allocate a series of cutter locations over the design surface with each one being confined within an angular rotation range. The allocation result satisfies a given constraint of geometrical errors on the finished surface, which consists of the tool positioning errors at each cutter location and the sweeping errors between consecutive ones. In addition, a feed rate scheduling algorithm is proposed to maximize the machining efficiency subject to the cutting force constraint and the kinematical constraints of a specific machine configuration. Simulation and experimental tests are conducted to validate the effectiveness of the proposed algorithms. Both the machining efficiency and finish surface quality are greatly improved compared with conventional cutter locations.

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