Multiple tool path planning for NC machining of convex pockets without islands

This work focuses on machining of pockets with convex angles and containing no islands. The approach is a hybrid contouring - staircasing one. Contouring aims at clearing enough space around the boundary to allow efficient staircasing in the interior. Three tools are foreseen: two for contouring and one for staircasing. The algorithm for contouring is based on creating offsets of the pocket boundary and checking them for self-crossing. Staircasing is based on parametrisation of the tool path with respect to its orientation to the pocket, so as to minimise the tool path length. Machining strategy is complemented by choosing the best combination of diameters of the three tools used. This is simply done by first enumerating all available combinations and then excluding the non-feasible ones, in order to compare the rest according to tool path length (or to machining time when individual feed values are known). The output of the program, which was implemented in Fortran, is the tool path, the CNC part program, which is created automatically, and a numerical comparison of all the tool-angle combinations tried out. A machining simulation based on the CNC program output is conducted on commercial CAM software to demonstrate validity of the result. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.