High speed pocket milling planning by feature-based machining area partitioning

Pocket milling operations are involved in two and a half-dimensional (2.5D) machining. The machining area of a pocket has to be divided into several sub machining regions (SMRs) to effectively select the machining parameters for ordinary or high speed milling. A SMR of a pocket has its own characteristic geometry, which implicitly provides machining features used for the generation of strategies for high speed machining. This paper presents a methodology to partition a pocket machining area, as well as to identify machining features used for planning of high speed pocket machining. To generate the machining strategy, the attributes of machining features are defined, and evaluated through a machining volume slicing method. SMR-based partitioning rules are developed based on the geometric features of a pocket. The proposed partitioning algorithm is applied to both simple and complex shaped pockets. A case pocket volume is divided into several SMRs, represented by a tree structure containing associated information for pocket milling planning. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.