Tool Posture Determination for 5-Axis Control Machining by Area Division Method

The study deals with a new method to generate interference-free tool posture for 5-axis control machining using a ball end-mill. The 5-axis control machining can produce complicated shapes and parts consisting of overhanging and or sculptured surfaces such as impellers. However, high degree of freedom of 5-axis control machining center causes a fatal problem that other parts except cutting edges of the tool may interfere with other surfaces of the machining object. Therefore, it is necessary to obtain the adequate tool postures to avoid the interference during machining. The interference avoidance is generally performed by the method that cutting points are generated so as to be arranged on the surface to be machined, and then the interference-free tool posture is determined on each cutting point by the geometrical calculations. However, the method has a problem that it takes long time for calculation. To solve the problem, the study proposes a new interference avoidance method of reversing the order of the above procedure, i.e., that of determining a set of interference-free tool postures before generating cutting points. From the machining results, it is confirmed that the proposed method is available to fabricate complicated shapes since the impeller can be machined by using the method.