TOOL PATH OPTIMIZATION OF POCKET CORNER

In milling around sharp corners, residual materials are left at sharp corners when the stepover is extremely long in the contour-parallel tool path. Milling force at the sharp corner rises momentarily due to the increase of the cutter contact length, thus shortening the tool life and leading to machine chatter, even cutter breakage. Then a tool path improvement method by inserting biarc transition segments in the contour-parallel tool path is proposed for milling the pocket. Using the method, the cutter moves along the biarc transition tool path. And the corner material is removed. The improved tool path is continuous for clearing residual materials at the sharp corner. Finally, the machining experiment validates the proposed method.

ENVELOPING THEORY BASED METHOD FOR THE DETERMINATION OF PATH INTERVAL AND TOOL PATH OPTIMIZATION FOR SURFACE MACHINING

An enveloping theory based method for the determination of path interval in three axis NC machining of free form surface is presented, and a practical algorithm and the measures for improving the calculating efficiency of the algorithm are given. Not only the given algorithm can be used for ball end cutter, flat end cutter, torus cutter and drum cutter, but also the proposed method can be extended to arbitrary milling cutters. Thus, the problem how to strictly calculate path interval in the occasion of three axis NC machining of free form surfaces with non ball end cutters has been resolved effectively. On this basis, the factors that affect path interval are analyzed, and the methods for optimizing tool path are explored.

Analytical modeling of geometric errors induced by cutter runout and tool path optimization for five-axis flank machining

The cutter runout effect has significant influence on the shape of cutter swept surface and the machining surface quality. Hence,it is necessary to integrate the cutter runout effect in cutter swept surface modeling,geometric error prediction and tool path optimization for five-axis flank machining. In this paper,an envelope surface model considering cutter runout effect is first established,and geometric errors induced by runout effect are derived based on the relative motion analysis between the cutter and part in machining. In the model,the cutter runout is defined by four parameters,including inclination angle,location angle,offset value and the length of cutter axis. Then the runout parameters are integrated into the rotation surface of each cutting edge that is used to form the final cutter envelope surface for the five-axis machining process. Thus,the final resulting geometric errors of the machined surface induced by cutter runout can be obtained through computing the deviations from the nominal cutter swept surface. To reduce these errors,an iterative least square method is used to optimize the tool paths for five-axis flank machining. Finally,a validation example is given for a specific ruled surface. Results show the effectiveness and feasibility of the analytical model of geometric errors induced by cutter runout,and also show that the geometric errors can be reduced significantly using the proposed tool path planning method.

Theoretical and Experimental Research on Error Analysis and Optimization of Tool Path in Fabricating Aspheric Compound Eyes by Precision Micro Milling

Structure design and fabricating methods of three-dimensional （3D） artificial spherical compound eyes have been researched by many scholars. Micro-nano optical manufacturing is mostly used to process 3D artificial compound eyes. However, spherical optical compound eyes are less at optical performance than the eyes of insects, and it is difficult to further improve the imaging quality of compound eyes by means of micro-nano optical manufacturing. In this research, nonhomogeneous aspheric compound eyes （ACEs） are designed and fabricated. The nonhomogeneous aspheric structure is applied to calibrate the spherical aberration. Micro milling with advantages in processing three-dimensional micro structures is adopted to manufacture ACEs. In order to obtain ACEs with high imaging quality, the tool paths are optimized by analyzing the influence factors consisting of interpolation allowable error, scallop height and tool path pattern. In the experiments, two kinds of ACEs are manufactured by micro-milling with different too path patterns and cutting parameter on the miniature precision five-axis milling machine tool. The experimental results indicate that the ACEs of high surface quality can be achieved by circularly milling small micro-lens individually with changeable cutting depth. A prototype of the aspheric compound eye （ACE） with surface roughness （Ra） below 0.12 p.m is obtained with good imaging performance. This research ameliorates the imaging quality of 3D artificial compound eyes, and the proposed method of micro-milling can improve surface processing quality of compound eyes.

Tool path generation and optimization for freeform surface diamond turning based on an independently controlled fast tool servo

Diamond turning based on a fast tool servo(FTS)is widely used in freeform optics fabrication due to its high accuracy and machining efficiency.As a new trend,recently developed high-frequency and long-stroke FTS units are independently driven by a separate control system from the machine tool controller.However,the tool path generation strategy for the independently controlled FTS is far from complete.This study aims to establish methods for optimizing tool path for the independent control FTS to reduce form errors in a single step of machining.Different from the conventional integrated FTS control system,where control points are distributed in a spiral pattern,in this study,the tool path for the independent FTS controller is generated by the ring method and the mesh method,respectively.The machined surface profile is predicted by simulation and the parameters for the control point generation are optimized by minimizing the deviation between the predicted and the designed surfaces.To demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed tool path generation strategies,cutting tests of a two-dimensional sinewave and a micro-lens array were conducted and the results were compared.As a result,after tool path optimization,the peak-to-valley form error of the machined surface was reduced from 429 nm to 56 nm for the two-dimensional sinewave by using the ring method,and from 191 nm to 103 nm for the micro-lens array by using the mesh method,respectively.