Flank Milling Surface Design with the Least Square Approach

Typically flank milling is used to machine ruled surfaces. In this paper, a method of designing doubly curved NURBS surfaces for flank milling using the least squares method is given. In this method, grazing points generated by the Bedi et al. [4] tool positioning method are used as sample points. The user defines the degree and the number of control points along two parametric directions of the surface. A NURBS surface is then fit to pass among the sample points using the least square technique [10, 11]. Accuracy of the surface is evaluated by the parametric error measurement method [12] and is controlled by increasing the number of control points. Surfaces that can be machined with great accuracy are generated. Examples are given to demonstrate this surface design method. Key-words: Curved surface design; Surface numerical analysis; Flank milling;