A study on the five-axis end milling for sculptured surfaces

The direction vector of milling cutter for CL-data of five-axis milling is obtained by the fact that the bottom part of the milling cutter rides on free-form surfaces using the z-map method. Since the direction vector is known, CL-data can be transformed to the NC-code with regard to the geometry of the five-axis machine and post-processing. For uniform surfaces, the tool path is created from the prediction of cusp heights. After generating the NC-code, a sculptured surface was machined by five-axis end milling and cusp heights on the machined surface were measured by a three-dimensional CMM with laser scanner. From this machining test, it was found that this machining method is effective.