Abstract
The purpose of this research is to develop a method for cutting non-circular holes on a bent thick plate. Generally in order to cut the holes on the large plates, a special-purpose 5-axis machine is needed. However, such a machine is unavailable in most of the machine shops. This paper provides a description of such a method that utilizes a general-purpose 5-axis water-jet machine in place of the special-purpose machine: First, the bent piece is transformed into a flat plate, where the shape of the holes is reconstructed by considering deformation during bending. Then, after a 5-axis NC data is generated, the holes on the flat plate are cut using the 5-axis water-jet machine. The final step is to return to its, original shape by bending the plate with its newly-cut holes. The proposed methodology is implemented as a dedicated system by customizing a commercial CAD/CAM system. Some illustrations are provided throughout the paper in order to show the validity of the proposed methods and the developed system.