NC code generation for laser assisted turn-mill of various type of clovers and square section members

Abstract

Laser assisted turning (LAT) is one of the advanced machining technologies, which uses laser power to heat the surface of a workpiece before the material is removed. It has several advantages of low manufacturing costs, high productivity and high qualities to machine difficult-to-cut materials such as silicon nitride, mullite, zirconia and Ni. A large part of studies on LAT have been focused on a round bar. With increasing demands for high quality products and high performance engineering system, the researches on LAT for clover and square section members are necessary. But, these workpieces are impossible to be machined on conventional CNC lathe and to generate NC code with current CAM softwares. As a basic research for combining LAT with a tilting index table type 5-axis machining center, i.e. laser assisted turn-mill, a new method is suggested to generate NC code that can process various types of clover and square section members through development of C++ program.