Multiple cutter pass flank milling
AssigneePratt & Whitney Canada Corp.
InventorChung Y. Wu
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
A method of flank milling complex surfaces comprising the steps of analyzing the design surface to determine discrete areas in which straight lines can be drawn, determining straight lines in the discrete areas, transposing the coordinates of these straight lines and comparing them with the flank tool cutter positions, determining the tool positions to said straight lines, back generating the contact lines of said surface and comparing these with the design surface, determining the number of passes of said cutter tool and generating data for numerical control machining.
Claims8
A method of flank milling complex surfaces comprising the steps of first determining a surface to be machined, establishing the relative position of a cutter tool contact surface relative to said surface to be machined, selecting a discrete portion of said surface, determining three or more reference planes intersecting said discrete surface, the intersection of said reference planes with the proposed surface resulting in reference curves, selecting a point on one of said reference curves and determining the straight line projecting through said selected point and intersecting with two other adjacent reference curves, determining the cutter tool position which corresponds to the contact surface of said cutter tool closest to said selected straight line and repeating the method until all cutter tool positions have been determined, back generating the projected surface from said cutter tool positions, comparing the back generated surface with the design surface, making a first finishing pass to machine a ruled surface between at least two reference curves and determining and making further finishing passes to machine ruled surfaces between other reference curves.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.