Cutter Swept Surface Construction using B-Spline Surface Interpolation

Abstract This article describes a method of constructing cutter-swept surfaces (CSS) for use in NC machining simulation and verification using NURBS interpolation. Most methods of CSS surface construction and evaluation today rely on linear cutter path curves, thus introducing error in the process of converting curved cutter paths to line segments. Our method takes a general cutter path curve in NURBS form along with the cutter geometry in the form of critical curves to derive a cutter-swept surface in NURBS form. This surface can then be intersected with the surface being cut to form an intermediate surface that can be evaluated for cutting error, volume removal calculations, and more.