Minimizing clear toolpath length using ant colony algorithm in pocket milling application

Abstract

Nowadays, the pocket milling is one of the metals cutting machining process that common use in the industry. In milling process, there are two common process involves which is roughing and finishing. The roughing process is the process that consume more total cutting time to remove the removal material in the pocketing. It is important to reduce the cutting time to avoid the increasing of production cost and others effect such as the damaged of the cutting tool. In the roughing process, there are technique which called the contour parallel machining that can produce minimum machining time compared to the others technique such as zigzag and one-way machining. However, the technique used will affect the occur of the uncut region at the corner and centre of contour. This is because of the defined parameter value of the interval between contour is more than the radius of the cutting tool diameter. By using the Ant Colony Optimization (ACO), the minimum additional tool path known as clear tool path is produced to remove the uncut region. By defined the α is 3 and β is 3, the minimum clear toolpath is 10281.81 mm. Hence, the total toolpath is obtained by sum of clear toolpath and length of contour parallel toolpath. The total toolpath length obtained is 63665.97 mm. To verify the simulation result of ACO, the result of toolpath length has been compared with result by MasterCAM. As the result, Ant Colony Optimization method show the better minimum machining time which is 6.87% reduction and 6.81% reduction total toolpath length in machining process than the conventional method which is in MasterCAM.