DEVELOPING A POSTPROCESSOR FOR 3 TYPES OF 5-AXIS MACHINE-TOOLS

This paper presents a postprocessor capable of converting cutter locat ion (CL) data to machine control data for three typical five-axis mach ine tools to establish an interface between computer-aided manufacturi ng (CAM) systems and numerically controlled (NC) machines. The analyti cal equations for NC data are obtained using the homogeneous coordinat e transformation matrix and inverse kinematics. In addition, the devel oped postprocessor method is implemented through a trial-cut on a five -axis machine and verified on the coordinate measurement machine. Expe rimental results confirmed the effectiveness of the proposed postproce ssor method which can be used to integrate the various five-axis machi ne tools employed in manufacturing systems.