Non-concentric milling
AssigneeCeleritive Technologies, Inc.
InventorsEvan C. Sherbrooke, Glenn Coleman
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
Technology for milling selected portions of a workpiece by a cutting tool of a numerical control machine is described. The described technology provides methods and apparatuses for milling areas of a part so that more aggressive machining parameters can be used in the toolpath, thereby resulting in reduced machining time and load. The technology creates a series of toolpath contours where arcs in the toolpath contours are non-concentric with arcs in other toolpath contours. The selected portions of the workpiece are milled by moving the cutting tool in accordance with the toolpath.
Claims21
1-15. (canceled)
A computer-implemented method for milling at least a portion of a workpiece by a cutting tool of a numerical control machine, the method comprising:
- determining a Voronoi Diagram of the at least a portion of the workpiece;
- adding one or more branches to the Voronoi Diagram to create a Modified Voronoi Diagram having one or more boundary elements distinct from the boundary of the at least a portion of the workpiece;
- generating at least a portion of a toolpath for the cutting tool based, at least in part, on one or more Voronoi faces corresponding to the Modified Voronoi Diagram;
- causing the cutting tool of the numerical control machine to mill the at least a portion of the workpiece in accordance with the at least a portion of the toolpath.
A non-transitory computer-readable storage medium storing computer-executable instructions that, when executed by one or more processors of a computing system, cause the computing system to perform actions comprising:
- determining a Voronoi Diagram of the at least a portion of a workpiece;
- adding one or more branches to the Voronoi Diagram to create a Modified Voronoi Diagram having one or more boundary elements distinct from the boundary of the at least a portion of the workpiece;
- generating at least a portion of a toolpath for a milling machine based, at least in part, on one or more Voronoi faces corresponding to the Modified Voronoi Diagram;
- causing the milling machine to mill the at least a portion of the workpiece in accordance with the at least a portion of the toolpath.
A computer-implemented method for milling at least a portion of a workpiece by a cutting machine, the method comprising:
- determining a first Voronoi Diagram of at least a portion of a workpiece;
- shortening at least one branch of the first Voronoi Diagram to generate a tangent continuous representation of a first subset of the workpiece;
- generating at least a portion of a toolpath for the cutting machine based, at least in part, on one or more Voronoi faces defined by a second Voronoi Diagram of the first subset of the workpiece;
- causing the cutting machine to mill the first subset of the workpiece in accordance with the at least a portion of the toolpath.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.