Free-Form Surfaces Machining by 3+2 Axis Method

Due to the rapid growth of manufacturing industry and increased competition among companies, the need to produce parts with free-form surfaces with lower cost and higher accuracy is felt. Nowadays beside all of the great benefits of 5-axis CNC machines the use of 3-axis CNC machines are more common in industry because of the high capital investment, high operating and maintenance cost, the low dynamic stability and their complex programming in 5-axis machining. Therefore it is preferred using 3-axis machines in industry where it’s possible. Since the inability of machining some complex parts by 3-axis machines, the 3axis machining technology has been proposed. In this paper, a new method has been used to determine the tool appropriate orientation for 3axis machining. In the proposed method, visible and invisible points of the surface and the shortest tool length are calculated for the workpiece and finally performed surface partitioning. The minimum number of tool orientation result from this methods reducing overall machining time and the boundaries between machining partitions to improves the surface quality. A 3axis machining of an impeller perform and evaluate the efficiency and surface accuracy by the use of a coordinate measuring machine.