An improved Z-MAP method based on the SQP algorithm for fast surface topography simulation of ball-end milling.

Products with complex free-form surfaces, such as aerospace impellers and automotive engines, are typically manufactured with ball-end milling. The machined surface topography is critical to these key components' performance in harsh environments. Accurate prediction of the machined surface topography is essential to obtaining the optimized process parameters to achieve the best possible surface quality. An improved Z-MAP method based on the sequential quadratic programming (SQP) algorithm is proposed for efficient ball-end milling surface topography simulation in this paper. Compared to the traditional Z-MAP method, this improved method does not discretize the cutter edge and does not require a strict time-step limit. At each simulation time interval, the workpiece surface grid points falling into the cutting-edge instantaneous sweep polygon are searched to reduce the computation scale. An optimization problem, which combines these grid points' coordinates with the cutting-edge trajectory model, is established for the accurate cutting time and cutting-edge element. The SQP algorithm is used to solve this optimization problem due to its global search capability. The surface topography is then updated by comparing the height of the cutting-edge element with the corresponding grid point. Experimental results indicate that the simulated surface topography is consistent with the measured surface topography. The proposed method achieves the same level of accuracy as the traditional method while requiring less computing time. The proposed method for fast surface topography in ball-end milling shows potential in optimizing process parameters to guarantee the surface quality of critical components. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]