Computation and Simulation of 5-Axis Cutter based on Scattered Point Cloud Data

The complex surface is modeled by triangular surface, B-spline or non-uniform rational B-spline first and then the planing of the cutter is followed in reverse engineering. But this require CAD/CAM software and operator's experiene. Because of this, the research on direct NC cutter generation from point cloud have become the focus of research in reverse engineering. The normal, curvature, surface vary et al parameters are calculated by principle component analysis method and so on, which define the local feature of the surface hidden in the point cloud. Then, based on local feature, point cloud is simplified. It is proved that two points with minimal orientation-distance on a pair of smooth surfaces are conjugate points. Thus the conjugate problem between the tool surface and the part surface is converted into optimization process of orientation-distance function. The cutter trace and the cutter interference are achieved by local and global optization of the orientation-distance function.