Swept surface determination for five-axis numerical control machining

This paper presents a closed-form solution of the swept profile of a generalized cutter in five-axis numerical control (NC) machining. The machine configurations and tool movements defined in NC programs are considered to model the true machine tool trajectory, which includes the linearly translational and rotational movements. Based on the machine tool trajectory and the cutter geometry, the cutter's instantaneous swept profile is determined. By integrating the intermediate swept profiles, the cutter's swept envelope can be constructed and applied to NC verification. The proposed method provides the explicit solution of the swept profile of a generalized cutter, which is important but not possible in the existing methods for five-axis NC verification. The computer implementations show that the approach developed is superior to the traditional methods. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.