Abstract
In manufacturing industry, CAM (Computer aided manufacturing) software is utilized to generate to tool paths for the CNC (Computer numerical controlled) machine tools. However, there are still many parameters requiring human decision. Especially in free form surface machining field, the diversity and complexity of the surface make it challenging to achieve both the surface quality and machining efficiency. In the proposed method the freeform surfaces are subdivided into different groups of patches according to the surface normal vector value. The neighboring areas on the freeform surface that approximately have the same normal vectors are clustered into one group of patch and tool path is generated on each patch. This method is implemented on a freeform surface model. The result of the proposed method is compared with the traditional tool path generation method and evaluated by the machining time.
