Optimal Tool Trajectory Integration in Surface Manufacturing

Automated CAD-guided tool planning has many applications in surface manufacturing, such as spray painting, spray forming, rapid tooling, cleaning and polishing. In our previous work, a general framework has been developed to automatically generate trajectories for a free-form surface for these tasks. Because of the complicated geometry of a free-form surface, it maybe partitioned into multiple patches. After trajectories for all patches are generated, they must be connected to form a complete trajectory. In this paper, the algorithm for automated optimal trajectory connection is developed and the optimal trajectory connection is formulated as an integer programming problem. Experimental tests have been carried out on automotive parts and the results validate the developed approach. This framework can also be extended to other applications such as material deposition using plasma gun. Copyright c ©2005 IFAC.