NURBS approximation to the flank-milled surface swept by a cylindrical NC tool

In this paper, a method to approximate the flank-milled surface swept by a cylindrical cutter with a non-uniform rational basis spline (NURBS) surface is presented. The swept surface produced by the moving tool can be calculated as a collection of points organized as a series of grazing curves along the surface. The generated NURBS surface closely matches the grazing surface. The deviation between this surface and the grazing surface is calculated and is controlled by increasing the number of control points used to represent the surface.