Prediction of Cutter-Workpiece Engagement for Five-Axis Ball-End Milling

Abstract

Five-axis ball-end milling technology is widely used in many industries such as aerospace, automotive and die-mold for complex surface machining. Despite recent advances in machining technology, productivity in five-axis ball-end milling is still limited due to the high cutting forces and stability. Moreover, cutting forces in machining is determined by extracting the cutter workpiece engagement (CWE) from the in-process workpiece. A discrete boundary representation method is developed. Cutter is firstly divided into disk elements along the tool axis. And in each disk element, boundary representation based exact Boolean method is introduced for extracting complex cutter-workpiece engagements at every cutter location due to its efficiency and speed over other discrete methods. Developed engagement model is proved to calculate complex engagement regions between tool and workpiece efficiently and accurately.