Experimental Study on Cutter Deflection in Multi-axis NC Machining

In five-axis sculptured surface machining, the effect of cutter deflection on tool orientation planning is important. This paper studied the method for online measurement of cutter deflections along two axes simulation. The measurement equipment was designed and implemented to acquire the displacements of cutter under cutting force online. Acquired data were processed to static values and then compensated by geometric analysis. The cutter deflection conditions were analyzed and divided into different types. The corresponding geometrical equations of the relationship of deflections of measured values and actual values were built. The inter-coupling values were decoupled by solving the geometrical equations. The changing regulations of cutter deflection with tool orientations were analyzed, which could provide support for the study of tool orientation planning. The effectiveness of measurement error compensation was verified by the difference between measured values and actual values of cutter deflections under various tool-workpiece inclination angles. This work could be further employed to optimize tool orientations for suppressing the surface errors due to cutter deflections and achieving higher machining accuracy.