Determination of angular fields outside low and high collisions to mill free-form surfaces on 5-axis CNC Machines

International audienceThe present article addresses positioning of a flat end milling cutter to ensure avoidance of local and global interference. The activity concerned is end milling of parts modelled by free-form surfaces on 5-axis Numerical Control machines. The tool positioning defined here uses two corrective angles and thus takes full advantage of all the possibilities for 5-axis machine movement. Local interference is cancelled out from a set of points defining the domain of the surface in collision with the cutter and an angular solution domain is proposed to orient the cutter. Global interference is resolved using a set of points; here too, a collision-free angular domain is defined. To obtain a collision-free tool, the two previously mentioned angular domains are superimposed. An additional corrective method is defined if no solution is found using the previous method. Finally, positioning free from local and global interference is obtained. The method was coded and positioning simulations were used to validate the approach's effectiveness