Facing the challenges of a shorter product design a nd manufacturing lead-time, many mold companies are using 3-D CAD/CAM software s ystems in design and manufacturing. A new product file is often issued to the mo ld ...Facing the challenges of a shorter product design a nd manufacturing lead-time, many mold companies are using 3-D CAD/CAM software s ystems in design and manufacturing. A new product file is often issued to the mo ld design department before it is completely finalized and the design may have t o be iterated many times during the mold design and making processes. In practic e, if a mold has been modified, all the tool paths that cover the modified regio n must be re-generated, no matter how small the modified region may be. With th e available tool path generation systems, if a tool path needs to be re-generat ed, all the cutter location (CL) points must be re-calculated, and none of the original CL points can be re-used. It would require as much time to re-gen erate the modified tool path as in the original case. On the other hand, the mod ified region is usually quite small compared with the entire mold. The complete re-generation process is therefore highly unproductive and time-consuming. This paper proposes an efficient tool path re-generation approach for 3-axis d ie and mold machining. It is assumed in this research that a gouge-free too l path has been generated for the original mold and the same ball end-mill is to be used to generate the tool path for the modified mold. It is shown in th is work that if the boundary of the modified region is interference-free, the a ffected CL points are enclosed by a set of CL points which correspond to the poi nts on the boundary of the modified region. An efficient tool path re-generatio n algorithm was developed in this research. With this algorithm, a closed CL cur ve is first generated from the boundary of the affected region. The CL points fo r the original mold are then analyzed by comparing the x and y values with the b oundary of the affected CL points. If the CL points are not affected by the modi fication, they are output to the new CL file directly. Otherwise, they are remov ed and replaced by the new CL points. The algorithm has been tested using severa l industrial parts, and results show that it is efficient, robust, and the re-g enerated tool path is gouge-free and smooth.展开更多
文摘Facing the challenges of a shorter product design a nd manufacturing lead-time, many mold companies are using 3-D CAD/CAM software s ystems in design and manufacturing. A new product file is often issued to the mo ld design department before it is completely finalized and the design may have t o be iterated many times during the mold design and making processes. In practic e, if a mold has been modified, all the tool paths that cover the modified regio n must be re-generated, no matter how small the modified region may be. With th e available tool path generation systems, if a tool path needs to be re-generat ed, all the cutter location (CL) points must be re-calculated, and none of the original CL points can be re-used. It would require as much time to re-gen erate the modified tool path as in the original case. On the other hand, the mod ified region is usually quite small compared with the entire mold. The complete re-generation process is therefore highly unproductive and time-consuming. This paper proposes an efficient tool path re-generation approach for 3-axis d ie and mold machining. It is assumed in this research that a gouge-free too l path has been generated for the original mold and the same ball end-mill is to be used to generate the tool path for the modified mold. It is shown in th is work that if the boundary of the modified region is interference-free, the a ffected CL points are enclosed by a set of CL points which correspond to the poi nts on the boundary of the modified region. An efficient tool path re-generatio n algorithm was developed in this research. With this algorithm, a closed CL cur ve is first generated from the boundary of the affected region. The CL points fo r the original mold are then analyzed by comparing the x and y values with the b oundary of the affected CL points. If the CL points are not affected by the modi fication, they are output to the new CL file directly. Otherwise, they are remov ed and replaced by the new CL points. The algorithm has been tested using severa l industrial parts, and results show that it is efficient, robust, and the re-g enerated tool path is gouge-free and smooth.
