Polishing path planning for physically uniform overlap of polishing ribbons on freeform surface

This paper presents a new polishing path planning method for physically uniform overlap of polishing ribbons instead of traditional geometrically uniform coverage of polishing path on freeform surfaces, which attempts to achieve the even material removal on the polished surface in consideration of contact mechanics in polishing process. The polishing ribbon is defined as the ribbon with varying width generated by continuous contact areas along the polishing path. The boundary extraction algorithm (BEA) is proposed to determine the specific polishing ribbon boundary which is next to the to-be-planned path. The path extraction algorithm (PEA) is given to predict the location of the adjacent polishing path. Those BEA and PEA make the overlap of polishing ribbons along two adjacent polishing paths physically uniform. Proposed polishing path planning is implemented for a typical freeform surface and the polishing paths with physically uniform overlap of polishing ribbons between two adjacent paths are obtained, while the under-polishing and over-polishing phenomena occur when the traditional scanning path is applied. In addition, the comparative experiments and analysis are also conducted and the experimental results further verify the feasibility of the proposed polishing path to promote even material removal.