An efficient, accurate approach to medial axis transforms of pockets with closed free-form boundaries

Medial axis transform of a pocket with free-form closed boundaries is a completed, compact representation of the pocket geometric shape and topology. It is very useful to multiple cutters selection and their tool paths generation for CNC machining of complex pockets. In the past decades, much research has been successfully conducted on the topic of finding the medial axis of a shape domain bounded with a polygon or simple geometries, e.g., lines and circles. Currently, more pockets with free-form boundaries are adopted in mechanical parts; however, the prior medial axis generation methods cannot handle this type of pockets well, resulting in long computation time and low medial axis accuracy. To address this problem, an efficient, accurate approach to calculating the medial axis transforms of these pockets is proposed in this work. An original optimization model of bisectors is established, and a new optimization method—the hybrid global optimization method—is developed to efficiently and accurately solve the optimization model of bisectors. The new optimization model and solver have been applied to many examples, and the testing results have demonstrated the advantages of this innovative approach over the prior medial axis methods. It can be an effective solution to the medial axis transforms of complex pockets.