Abstract
Generally, ball end-mills are used for machining free-form surfaces. When machining free-form curved surfaces using ball end-mills, removing the cutting remnants known as cusps formed on machined surfaces is necessary. Since cusp removal is performed manually by hand, much time and labor is required. This paper proposes several methods to decide optimal tool postures and tool paths for 5-axis control machining using flat end-mills and radius end-mills in order to efficiently and precisely machine free-form surfaces. A basic system based on the proposed methods was constructed, and the effectiveness of the proposed methods was verified through simulations and experiments.
