A geometrical simulation of ball end finish milling process and its application for the prediction of surface topography

Sculptured surfaces are widely used in the die and mold industries. The finishing process of these surfaces is time consuming and expensive. Therefore, it is practically of great importance to predict and further to control the products' surface finish during the finish milling process. This paper presents a general simulation methodology based on a Zmap model of workpiece for predicting surface topographic features and roughness formed in the finish milling process. The adoption of the discretization concept of the tool and workpiece makes it possible to dynamically track the cutting tool-workpiece interaction with the tool movement. At last, Experiments are carried out to study the milling process and to verify the simulation results.