Comparison of Milling Strategies for Sculptured Surfaces...

The objective of this work is the machining of a specimen, with specific geometry, using three milling path orientations available in CAM software. Specimens of AISI P20 were milled with different cutter path orientations using three conditions: rough milling, semi-finish milling, and finish milling. The milling time was registered by CAM and compared with the actual time, along with the surface roughness, Ra and Rz, being measured for each path orientation. Moreover, the specific part areas of the specimen were analyzed considering the contact tangent point of the finishing tools. The results have shown that the time estimated by CAM was shorter than the experimental cutting time, and the surface roughness changed significantly according to the contact point between tool and specimen. When a visual analysis of convex, concave surface, and radius of rounding is considered, good finishing for the three-path orientation can be observed.