Torus cutter positioning in five-axis milling using balance of the transversal cutting force

International audienceThis article introduces a new torus cutter po-sitioning strategy for five-axis milling of free-form sur-faces. This approach ensures elimination of localinterference while also allowing better surface quality to be obtained than with positioning proposed bycomputer-aided manufacturing (CAM) software. In prac-tice, the cutter axis is inclined to the rear in relation tothe feed movement. A first inclination for the cutter axisis calculated to allow local interference to be eliminated.Then, an additional inclination is given to tool axis toachieve balancing of the transversal cutting force com-ponent perpendicular to the plane containing the toolaxis and the feedrate vector. This particular machiningsituation considerably enhances the cutter's dynamic be-haviour and gives better roughness values than thoseobtained with positioning by CAM software. A posi-tioning method is adapted to the negative rearwardinclination of the cutter axis, and it is then shownhow transversal cutting force balancing is integrated inthe form of an additional inclination. Finally, a compar-ison of the results obtained after milling with this newpositioning and positioning calculated by a CAM pro-gram highlights the new method’s advantage