CAM Software for Multi-axis Laser Direct Manufacturing and Re-manufacturing

Laser direct manufacturing and re-manufacturing (LDMR) is one of advanced Rapid Manufacturing (RM) techniques. For overcoming the problem of conventional three-axis RM, multi-axis machine tool or robot has been applied in RM systems recently. This paper introduces a CAM software developed on a commercial CAD/CAM platform. The CAM system automatically generates the tool paths for multi-axis LDMR by direct slicing. For process planning, neural network is used to optimize the process parameters. These tool paths and parameters are then translated into motion control commands of multi-axis machine tool by post processing. A description of the CAM software is given. Direct slicing method and neural network model are also discussed in this paper.