Machining Free Form Surfaces with Hexapod Machine Tool

A hexapod machine tool with a parallel structure has six degrees of freedom. This machine has a high dexterity unlike traditional machine tools. The hexapod can be used in machining free form surfaces. Free form surfaces are widely used in today industries. These surfaces are much encountered in auto, aerospace and mold design industries. Therefore machining of these surfaces has attracted the attention of researchers. In this field much research has been done in five axis machine tools. In this paper machining free form surfaces with hexapod machine tool has been investigated. The main topic of this paper is the feasibility of using hexapod as a machine tool table and machining with it. First, the interpolation of free form surfaces for parallel structure machines is explained. Then NURBS curves and surfaces are described and its formulation in matrix form is explained. Then extracting information of free form surfaces with NURBS formulation is explained. Subsequently, some explanation about preparation of machining is given. Finally two free form surfaces designed in Catia and have been machined with the developed hexapod machine tool.