Vision assisted NC milling path generation

Abstract CAD/CAM software are an interrelated mesh of computer programming systems that serve to monitor, process and control the flow of manufacturing data. Modern day techniques rely extensively on the integration of standards like the initial graphics exchange specification (IGES) with automated path planning modules. The intent of such an integration is to maintain the system as generic as possible. Integration of the various aspects of manufacturing systems provides total automation of the system. A machine vision system was used to generate the NC code to face mill any planar polygonal part. The vision system helps to capture the image of the face of a polygonal object. This image is decoded into edges and vertices by performing computations in software, based on simple image processing rules. Then the software passes the control to a path planning module. This module selects the most efficient tool path and generates the part program to face mill the part. This paper presents a detailed description of the algorithm developed along with its application environment.