Fast Cutter Accessibility Analysis Using Ray Tracing Cores of GPU

In the cutter path computation for the five-axis machining, it takes much time to determine proper cutter postures in machining. We propose a novel method for calculating all possible cutter postures that can be used in machining mold’s surface without collisions in a short time. In determining the cutter postures for each cutting point, intersection detection between a line segment and a set of polygons is frequently carried out. Latest graphics processing units (GPUs) are equipped with a hardware called ray tracing (RT) cores dedicated to image processing in the 3D computer graphics. We use this RT core technology for accelerating the intersection detection and consequently reducing the time and cost necessary in the cutter posture determination. We also present the numerical experiments conducted to verify the effectiveness of the proposed method.