Cutter location points fitting method for compound surface machining

Now the compound surface is applied broadly in the industry production design. So the tool path planning closely related to compound surface numerical control (NC) machining needed to studied in depth. In this paper, a novel cutter location (CL) point fitting method in the phase of post-process is proposed. In the calculation process, the first the initial cutter location points are calculated applying iso-planar method, and then applying the constrained optimization techniques, the overall first-order continuous smooth tool paths are obtained by fitting the CL points with arcs and straight line. Finally, a calculation example to verify the effectiveness of the algorithm is presented. The results show that the output amount of program segment can be reduced greatly by applying the presented method.