Accuracy improvement method for flank milling surface design

In this paper, a variation of the method of designing surfaces for flank milling proposed by Li et al. 2006 (Surface design for flank milling. Submitted to CAD, July) is presented. Li’s method is based on the premise that the surface flank milled by a cylindrical tool can be represented by a NURBS surface and can be used by designers to build efficient impellers, blades and other engineering parts. In the proposed method, a four control point curve is used to approximate the grazing curves and for subsequent generation of a polynomial surface. This eliminates the need of weights for the interior control points and still results in a good surface. The accuracy of the surface can be controlled by adding control points. Examples are given to demonstrate the proposed surface design method.