Modeling on the Coverage of Free-Form Surfaces

Abstract

This chapter describes modeling analysis on tool path to enable uniform coverage of three dimensional (3D) free-form surfaces. In fact, on a planar domain, uniform coverage of two dimensional (2D) surfaces are more easy to be created because the path length per unit area is the same everywhere. Short path segments may have advantages in some free-form surfacing fields. The surface is divided into small surface patches. A diagonal segment from each patch is joined to form the tool path. The size of the surface patches is adapted according to the local geometry of the surface to preserve uniformity of coverage. It is further proposed that multiple diagonal segments from each of the surface patches may be adopted to alleviate the problem of closely aligned path segments. The proposed method was illustrated with path generation examples. A set of process experiments were also conducted to finish free-form specimens.