Toward 5-axis High Speed Machining

We present a scheme to construct C1 continuous toolpath for 5-axis pocketing of high speed machining. A continuous toolpath synthesis is proposed, that forms out circular segments of maximally inscribed sizes and linear segments connecting these circular segments. Extending earlier work that employed the Medial Axis Transform to compute these maximally inscribed circles for 2D planar pockets, this work examines general pockets in R3 represented as NURBS surfaces, and in 5-axis machining setup. Results are demonstrated by employing the proposed scheme toward the machining of impellers. Possible extensions toward a C2 continuous toolpath is discussed as well.