Visualization of the setup location of a workpiece for five-axis machining

The common way to perform five-axis machining is to generate the toolpaths by using CAM software, which usually considers only the interference between the tool and the workpiece. However, in the actual machining process, either the tool assembly may collide with the worktable, or one of the axes may travel over its limits. Once these problems occur, then re-adjustment of the setup location of the workpiece or the tool axis in the CAM software are needed to resolve the problems. Because both are based on trial-and-error, there is no guarantee that the readjustments will work. The objective of this research was to develop an algorithm to compute the domain where the workpiece can be set up without the mentioned problems. The algorithm first calculates machinable domains for all orientations of the tool axes along the toolpaths without traveling over-limit. The intersection of the domains, called initial machinable domain, is where the workpiece can be set up without traveling over the limits of the axes. The next step is to calculate the total interference domain where interference between the tool assembly and the worktable may occur. Subtracting the total interference domain from the initial machinable domain yields the machinable domain where neither over-limit nor interference between the tool assembly and the worktable will occur. Two cases are presented to demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed method. The results in both cases were verified by CAM simulation. The innovation of this research is to propose a method to compute the machinable setup domain which can directly show the setup location without the over-limit and interference issues during the machining process, especially the interference issue between machine components. In addition, it can eliminate the trial-and-error in CAM planning and make the setup domain visible, which makes it convenient and confident for the CAM engineer to determine the setup location.