New Feed Rate Optimization Formulation in a Parametric Domain for 5-Axis Milling Robots

When producing a numerical control (NC) program for a 5-axis CNC machine (the so-called milling robot) to mill a sculptural surface, a constant feed rate value is usually assigned based on programmer’s experiences. For this reason, the feed rate in most of NC programs is often not optimized, it is much lower than maximum reachable value. To increase the productivity of the machining process, the feed rate in NC programs for the milling robots need to be maximized. This paper proposes a new feed rate optimization model, of which the objective function and all the kinematic constraints are transformed and expressed explicitly in a parametric domain which is commonly used in the tool path generation process performed by current CAM systems. Thus, the optimal feed rate values along a parametric tool path can be computed in an effective and simplified manner. Numerical examples demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method. © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020.