Direct Generative Vehicle Machining

Direct vehicle generative machining is a new method to machine the vehicle globally and directly. In most CAM systems the surface drive method or area mill method is used to generate the tool paths. No matter what method is used, the user must select the surface patches one-by-one to generate the tool path sequence. Usually, a vehicle model has more than 1000 surfaces; hence, generating tool paths for the vehicle is extremely time-consuming. Using the direct generative vehicle machining method described in this paper, the processing time of manufacturing plan can be greatly reduced. The details of the direct generative vehicle machining methods are described as applied to an SSR model. Using a global vehicle machining method, the SSR model represented by nearly 2000 surfaces was reduced to a model with only 37 surfaces.