Space cutter radius compensation method for free form surface end milling

The numerical control (NC) program for multi-axis end milling depends on the parameters of the tool, in particular, the radius of the tool. When there is any tool dimensional change due to various reasons, the user needs to re-generate the NC program, which is a time-consuming procedure. In this article, a cutter radius compensation method for multi-axis end milling is proposed. It takes a general NC program as the input, recovers the normal vectors of the machined surface from the NC program via surface reconstruction, and uses these vectors as compensation vectors to realize space cutter radius compensation. The proposed algorithm of shape reconstruction and normal vector computation has a linear complexity in terms of the number of cutter center location points in the NC program. Thus, real-time computation and compensation is possible. Our method also provides a way to restore the machined surface if the CAD model of the machines surface is not accessible. This has other applications, such as interference detection and manufacturing simulation. The compensation algorithm is shown to be very effective in reducing the number of undercut points through simulation with the software VERICUT and with real milling for real-world NC programs.