A surface enveloping-assisted approach on cutting edge calculation and machining process simulation for skiving

As a particular two degree of freedom generating method, skiving is effective to manufacture the periodically distributed internal and external profiles, and its cutting edge design is a foundational problem. In order to avoid the singularity in analytical methods, this paper studied a discrete surface assisted universal method to identify the cutting edge of skiving cutter and simulate the machining process by discrete cutting points. Firstly, the kinematic model of skiving was constructed in aspects of the parametrical modeling of the cutter and workpiece as well as the machining configuration. The principle of cutting edge identification was investigated based on the conjugation process of skiving in the following. Then, the entire procedure for cutting edge calculation was presented in detail. Therefrom, according to the profile generation during cutting action, the skiving spatial contacts were analyzed through reasonable coordinate frame transformation. At last, an external skiving for involute gear was taken, the cutting edges for two kinds of rake flank were calculated, and the machining error between the machined profile and desired profile was compared to proof the correctness of calculated cutting edges. Besides, the analysis of the spatial contact motions for these cases validated the effectiveness and the practicality of the proposed method.