RECOGNITION OF ROUGH MACHINING FEATURES IN 21 2D COMPONENTS/

In this paper, two methods are used to recognize the roughing features in an intermediate workpiece, which is obtained by gluing the finishi ng features onto the original component. The first method is based on the physical states of equilibrium and hence is referred to as the equ ilibrium method. This method recognizes features originating from conv ex inner loops. The second method, referred teas the concavity method, uses the concavity of vertices, edges and faces to detect features an d the interactions between them. The features are represented as volum es and are classified according to a feature taxonomy. In this taxonom y, a new class of features, i.e. free features, is included. Examples of such features are blend, edge and vertex volumes. Edge and vertex v olumes are combined with face volumes to form face machining features. The methodology is illustrated by recognizing the features in two ind ustrial components. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved .