A general framework for automatic CAD-guided tool planning for surface manufacturing

Surface manufacturing is widely used in industry. Automatic CAD-guided tool planning has many applications in surface manufacturing, such as spray painting, spray forming, rapid tooling, cleaning and polishing. According to the material quantity requirements, these tasks can be categorized into two groups: the material uniformity problem and coverage problem. A general framework is developed to automatically generate trajectories of a free-form surface for these tasks. A given task is first transformed into one of the groups. Based on the CAD model of a free-form surface, constraints and tool model, a trajectory for a free-form surface is generated. Velocity optimization is discussed to optimize the material quantity. Simulations are performed to verify the developed framework. This framework can also be extended to other applications.