6-Axis Control Sculptured Surface Finishing by Varying Cutting Edge Curvature due to Change in Tool Attitude

6-Axis control machining by use of non-rotational cutting tools offers a variety of machining possibilities in combination with the conventional machining by use of rotational cutting tools. The study deals with sculptured surface finishing as one of typical 6-axis control machining applications, where a non-rotational cutting tool is fed along sculptured surfaces to finish a workpiece with the cusp height as low as possible. The machining by use of ball end mills often requires the tool change to adapt their cutting edge radius to a surface curvature of workpieces to be machined, which leads to the deterioration of surface quality. To carry out the surface finishing without tool change, a new concept is proposed that a cutting edge radius of non-rotational cutting tool is virtually varied by changing the cross-sectional configuration of cutting edge through the rotation and inclination around the tool axis. The method is put into the main processor to generate CL data. From experimental results, the method is found to be valid in finishing sculptured surfaces with a kind of non-rotational tools to some extent.