Determination of Cutting Orientation in Zigzag Milling Operationa: A Geometrical Approach;

This paper describes new methods to minimize the cutting time in zigzag milling operation of two dimensional polygonal surfaces. Previous works have been focused on mainly experimental approaches by considering some machining parameters such as, spindle speed, depth of cut, cutter traverse rate, cutter diameter, number of teeth, tool wear, life of tool, and so on. However, in this study, we considered two geometrical factors one by one in order to see the effect separately, which are the length of cut and the number of cutter traverse. In an N-sided concave or convex polygon, an algorithm has been developed which minimize the total length of cut. Also, a heuristic approach was used to minimize the number of cutter traverse.