Research on inverse evaluation mechanism in toolpath generation based on global interpolation simulation

Abstract

Free form surfaces are primarily designed and manufactured by CAD/CAM/CNC system. In traditional way, toolpath generation approaches always consider machining precision and efficiency by constraining scallop height and toolpath lengths. However, toolpath lengths do not exactly reflect the actual machining time because the feedrate usually fluctuates along different toolpath during CNC interpolating period, which indicates that the total machining efficiency is coupled with both toolpath generation and interpolation. Therefore, the toolpath generation and interpolation systems should not be independent, and the conventional unidirectional information flow from CAM to CNC should be replaced by a new mechanism with information exchange and mutual optimization. This paper proposes an inverse evaluation mechanism with feedback information from CNC to CAM system. The feedback information is obtained by off-line interpolation simulation for each toolpath and evaluation of the total machining time for the entire surface. With the feedback information, CAM is able to optimize the toolpath or choose the best one among candidate solutions. As the evaluation mechanism should be under the same interpolation algorithm, an interpolation algorithm with axis kinematic/dynamic constraints is also introduced. The simulation results with different free form surfaces show that the proposed mechanism can economically improve the machining efficiency without increasing system cost.