Analysis of the twist of ruled surfaces: application to strip machining

Flank milling of ruled surfaces is commonly applied to obtain rotating machine parts as defined using ruled surfaces. To this purpose, a wide range of positioning strategies had been studied to reduce interference between the cutting tool and the surface. Indeed, modelled ruled surfaces are non-developable meaning that they cannot be machined without interference. In order to minimise such interference, the positioning strategies studied tend to become increasingly complex, involving software programming using a dedicated language. To simplify matters and apply developed methods using standard software applications, it is proposed here to reduce interference by breaking the machined surface down into a number of sub-surfaces. The aim with this decomposition is to reduce the twist on each portion. A study of the global twist is presented showing nonlinearity with the length of the rule so that cutting methods can be demonstrated. [Received 28 November 2016; Revised 18 April 2017; Accepted 26 June 2017]