DefinePK

Abstract

The scallop height is the most substantial variable in determining the quality of machined surface. Many analytical approaches were proposed to calculated the scallop height in five-axis milling. Most of them addressed the issue of scallop height for toroidal cutter by approximating the inclined cutting tool using two common primitive geometries, either circle or ellipse. This paper presents an analytical method to calculate the scallop height of toroidal cutter produced by predefined tool path in five-axis milling. The present study was aimed to improve the drawback of the existing method in representing the swept curve of inclined toroidal cutter. In this study, the swept curve was calculated analytically by adopting the method to calculate the grazing point in swept envelope development. The coordinate of intersection point was calculated by using the combination of swept curve algorithm and coordinate mapping equations. The proposed method was successfully used to generate scallop height data for two machining processes with different step over.