AUTOMATED PATH PLANNING FOR FACE MILLING OF N-SIDED CONVEX POLYGONAL SURFACES USING STAIRCASING STRATEGY

In a manufacturing environment, many times, it is difficult to have NC physical effort with actual machining. This effort can be considerabl y minimized by analytical modeling of tool path. The path selected for face milling of flat convex polygonal surfaces can significantly affe ct the cutter travelling distance. Past studies have identified that e fforts were made to minimize the path selected for machining these sur faces. However, not much information is available on machining convex polygonal parts for N-sides. An object oriented software package was d eveloped in Turbo C+ + to graphically simulate the tool path while fac e milling different N-sided polygonal surfaces following staircasing p ath. The staircasing strategy was adopted since the shortest length of cut generated is better than that generated by window frame milling. Pop Up menus were created so that the software developed is interactiv e, user friendly and complete with error handling.