A geometrical approach to computer-aided process planning for computer-controlled machine tools

This paper documents part of a research program which has been under way at the CIM Centre at Swinburne University of Technology since 1989. The purpose of the research program was to develop an open-architecture machine tool control system and then to see how that system could be used to change the distribution of traditional manufacturing design, planning and control functions. This paper examines one part of that research program and focuses on a methodology which could prove to be useful in the machine tool selection, cutter selection and cutter path generation phases of process planning for cutting operations on workpieces in computer-controlled machine tools.It is suggested that a configuration space transform be used for each cutter/machine tool combination to find the volume that the combination could remove from the uncut workpiece without removing any of the material that will form the final workpiece. A method of comparing these volumes from different combinations is then outlined. The output of this method is a reasonable sequence of machine tools and cutters. Path planning can then be carried out for each of the chosen combinations using a method similar to the one used to find the possible volume to be removed.Possible implementation techniques, and their limitations on existing computer hardware, are discussed and the most promising of these are identified, based upon some properties of configuration space transforms.