A PARTITIONING METHOD FOR FREEFORM SURFACE TO MACHINE ON 3 AXES CNC MILLING MACHINE

Abstract

Freeform surfaces are widely used in various industries, but because of complicated geometry they require much time to be machined. Their partitioning allows appropriately select cutting tools and tool-path to increase machining productivity. This paper presents a partitioning method based on Gaussian and mean curvatures, and defining boundaries of local patches by Freeman algorithm. Simulation result with a B-spline surface shows that proposed method can reduce the machining time about 17% in comparison to non-partitioned method.