N. Oancea et Vg. Oancea, GEOMETRICAL DESIGN OF CUTTING TOOLS WITH SURFACES OF REVOLUTION FOR HELICAL SURFACES, Proceedings of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers. Part C, Journal of mechanical engineering science, 211(7), 1997, pp. 559-566
Machining of helical surfaces of constant pitch with tools bounded by
surfaces of revolution is accompanied by generation errors due to impe
rfections of the effective cutting edge, relative positioning errors o
r kinematics of the machine tool. Therefore, the development of algori
thms for the geometrical modelling of helical surfaces could be very u
seful. In fact, it is possible to model geometrically the effective ge
nerated surface on the workpiece when the cutting edge is known at dis
crete points, for instance, by physical measurement. Based on the prin
ciple of minimal distance first proposed in a previous work of the fir
st author, a numerical method is developed that provides a very simple
, yet very accurate, means to resolve both the direct and the inverse
problem in the machining of helical surfaces with milling cutters and
end mills. Thus, the profile of the cutting tool can be determined eve
n for surfaces on the workpiece of arbitrary shape known either analyt
ically or at discrete points. More importantly, it can be established
either in the design or the exploitation stage what the accepted error
s on the tool are (due to sharpening or wear), such that the tolerance
s on the surface to be machined are still met.