Complexity analysis and calculation for sculptured surface in multi-axis CNC machining based on surface subdivision

Complexity of sculptured surfaces has a great influence on multi-axis computer numerical control (CNC) machining performances such as processing efficiency, surface quality, and energy consumption. A term called surface machining complexity (SMC) is first presented to describe the complexity level of surface geometrical shape features, and its influence on CNC machining performance. Shape features of sculptured surfaces are classified into seven categories based on surface curvature. An innovative method for quantifying SMC using surface subdivision is proposed. Firstly, representation of sculptured surfaces is introduced. Then, three processes of surface subdivision are presented, which are surface discretization based on iso-parameter line sampling, rough partitioning based on surface shape categories, and region grouping based on two criteria. After that calculation, formulas of SMC including formulas of local SMC and global SMC are developed. The proposed formulas utilize three correction factors to describe the influences of surface size, cutter diameter, grouping order, and mode of different surface shape categories. Finally, the proposed method is applied to calculate SMC for a typical sculptured surface and multi-axis CNC machining experiments to demonstrate the ability of our method, which can form a foundation for further research.