Treffer: Uniform toolpath generation based on conformal mapping and deformation compensation for complex structures.

Mapping-based methods for planning toolpaths on mesh surfaces have been developing for years. The issue of existing mapping deformation which results in machining error has not been sufficiently addressed. Moreover, in order to accommodate the variable boundary conditions and local features of complex structures, existing toolpath planning methods have to trim the original surfaces into simple patches or introduce complex invalid loop processing algorithms. This greatly increases the complexity of the algorithm. To handle these, an effective approach for generating uniform toolpath without introducing any additional complex algorithms is proposed. With the approach, conformal mapping is utilized to simplify the toolpath planning computation from three-dimensional (3D) space into two-dimensional (2D) domain; an improved level-set offset algorithm is developed for generating uniform toolpaths with arbitrary initial boundaries; and a partition algorithm is further developed that is capable of generating the regional contours without modifying the original mesh for better toolpath performance. Case studies have been carried out and demonstrated that the proposed approach can generate more compatible toolpath patterns for complex structures, which can save the total length at most 44% with same scallop height constraint. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]