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Article history: We propose a novel method to generate 2.5D CNC milling toolpaths that have characteristics designed
Received 1 May 2015 for reducing energy usage. The energy consumed in multi-axis CNC milling is a function of the toolpath,
Received in revised form 1 May 2015 component geometry, CNC machine construction, and the tool (cutter) itself. In this work, we focus solely
Accepted 1 May 2015
on the toolpath geometry and propose a new method that, when all other factors are held constant, can
Available online xxx
result in toolpaths that require less energy for milling out the same pocket geometry. This strategy is
based on selectively relaxed vector fields, specifically designed for the component to be machined. Pilot
Keywords:
results comparing a toolpath generated using the proposed strategy to those generated using commercial
Toolpath planning
Energy efficiency
CAM software indicate the potential for substantial savings in energy usage.
CNC milling © 2015 The Society of Manufacturing Engineers. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jmapro.2015.06.009
1526-6125/© 2015 The Society of Manufacturing Engineers. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Please cite this article in press as: Pavanaskar S, et al. Energy-efficient vector field based toolpaths for CNC pocketmachining. J Manuf
Process (2015), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jmapro.2015.06.009
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2 S. Pavanaskar et al. / Journal of Manufacturing Processes xxx (2015) xxx–xxx
Fig. 1. A typical power-time plot for a single 2.5D milling cut starting from rest. Notice the “spikes/peaks” in power consumption when the spindle starts and again when a
cutting motion in an axis-direction starts. The blue curve represents actual readings (period 0.1 s) while the black curve represents a moving average curve (period 1 s).
2. Direction: The same toolpath strategy (topology), when used in a consumption [14]. Additionally, these paths are also favorable
different primary direction, may result in different energy con- for surface finish and tool life [15].
sumption because a machine may require a different amount of 4. Direction of toolpaths: Wisely choosing the direction to obtain
energy to move/cut in each direction. For example, in a Haas VF-0 longer toolpath segments also helps in significantly reducing the
3-axis CNC milling machine, the X-axis is physically mounted on cutting time and energy requirement. Thus, fewer long toolpath
top of the Y-axis, resulting in a higher power requirement when segments in one direction are better than many shorter path
cutting or moving along the Y-axis, due to the additional mass of segments.
the X-axis that must also move every time the Y-axis moves.
3. Machine variability: In addition to not finding a single most Based on the above observations, we anticipate that toolpath
effective toolpath strategy or cutting direction across all geome- planning for energy-efficient machining may involve some trade-
tries, as Balogun et al.’s [1] findings suggest, the most effective offs. For example, in terms of energy use, a larger percentage
toolpath strategy for a given geometry could also change from overlap between two adjacent toolpath segments would be detri-
machine to machine, since machine construction, axis mounting, mental due to increasing the number of toolpath segments for the
etc. may differ. In other words, a toolpath found to be the most same component. However, a higher overlap may be better for cer-
efficient among available alternative toolpaths on the Haas VF-0 tain applications aimed at superior surface finish. Thus, the toolpath
may or may not be the most efficient when the same candidate planning strategy or topology and the process planning software
toolpaths are analyzed for a different machine. must optimize a weighted combination of possibly contradictory
objectives. Therefore, no single traditional strategy or technique
However, we also found several geometric characteristics of could be used to generate toolpaths that will be both productive
toolpaths that tend to result in lower energy consumption irrespec- and energy-efficient by design.
tive of the underlying strategy or cutting direction. Fig. 1 shows the In this paper, we explore the applicability of a technique devel-
plot of power demand against time for a simple toolpath cut starting oped by Maharik et al. [9] for the domain of computational art
from rest for a 2.5D CNC milling machine. We observed that certain (specifically, digital micrography) that we found inspiring as a foun-
characteristics of toolpaths, e.g. sudden change in cutting direc- dation to develop toolpaths that could be energy-efficient by design
tion, starting/stopping of spindle or axis motors, result in notable due to similarities in the underlying problems. We explain this in
events (peaks) on a power–time curve. The area under this curve the next sections, starting with the description of the research on
represents total energy required in the operation. After observing digital micrography.
such plots for multiple pocket milling experiments, we deduced
that: 3. Digital micrography
1. A toolpath that makes fewer and gradual changes in cutting The digital micrography technique focuses on generating aes-
direction is better for reduced energy consumption. Extensive thetically pleasing text arrangements that convey an underlying 2D
and frequent changes in toolpath direction cause spikes in the shape while still being readable. Micrographic text arrangements,
power consumption, resulting in higher overall energy con- as shown in Fig. 2, are a special type of calligraphic arrangement
sumption in the process. Additionally, such sudden acceleration of text. These highly artistic arrangements of text can take hours
events (jerks) reduce the tool life [8]. to create manually. Maharik et al. generate complex micrographic
2. Toolpaths that avoid sharp corners and frequent lifts tend to arrangements automatically, by developing an algorithm to auto-
reduce the machining time and energy consumed. Toolpaths matically place the text.
with continuously varying, low curvature (without sharp cor- Automatic generation of micrographic images starts with
ners or turns) avoid repeated acceleration/deceleration events designing a smooth vector-field over the input geometry, followed
that cause spikes in power consumption. Also, frequently lifting by tracing streamlines that act as seed points to place text. Once
and repositioning the tool results in non value-added air-cutting, streamlines are traced from the designed vector-field, text is placed
causing higher cycle time and increased energy usage [7]. and re-sized along the streamlines to generate the final output. This
3. Maintaining constant cutting loads by using longer segments process is shown for an example shape in Fig. 3 and described in
with near constant machining rate results in lower energy greater detail in the next section.
Please cite this article in press as: Pavanaskar S, et al. Energy-efficient vector field based toolpaths for CNC pocketmachining. J Manuf
Process (2015), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jmapro.2015.06.009
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curvature, high coherency, and such that adjacent lines are equally
spaced. Such lines are important not only for readability but also
for visual appeal. Further, for readability, uniform, left to right text
flow is maintained to help the reader follow the lines of text easily.
The lines have low curvature with no sharp changes in direction.
They also have as much length as possible. Based on these require-
ments and the trends we identified above, we postulated that the
underlying techniques used in this work to generate micrographic
images can be extended into a toolpath strategy (similar to zig-
zag or contour-parallel strategies) for generating toolpaths that
inherently have properties of energy efficient toolpaths. This idea
led us to explore a novel method of toolpath generation based on
selectively relaxed vector fields.
Please cite this article in press as: Pavanaskar S, et al. Energy-efficient vector field based toolpaths for CNC pocketmachining. J Manuf
Process (2015), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jmapro.2015.06.009
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Fig. 4. Seven alternative strategies from MasterCAM: (A) Constant overlap spiral. (B) One-way, X-parallel. (C) Parallel spiral. (D) One-way, Y-parallel. (E) True spiral. (F) High-
speed machining. (G) Two-way, X-parallel. (H) Our proposed toolpath
As has been previously reported, this is equivalent to the NP hard both endpoints of all non-traversed streamlines for the nearest end-
problem of finding the shortest Hamiltonian path between nodes point. If the nearest point can be reached by only traveling along
of a graph [2]. Thus, we used a greedy approximation approach the offset part boundary, we add CL points (G01 mode) along the
to reach a near-optimal solution that could be used in practical offset boundary to reach that endpoint. If not, the tool is lifted and
applications. taken straight across (in G00 mode) to this nearest endpoint to
resume machining (after first plunging in G01 mode). The process
repeats itself every time the path is extended along a streamline
4.2.1. Connecting streamlines: a greedy approach and its other endpoint is reached. The algorithm stops when all
We have developed a method to plan complete pocket machin- streamlines’ endpoints have been visited, thus ensuring traversal
ing toolpaths for a pocket starting from the streamline geometry along all streamlines. For this paper, the streamlines for the exam-
(traced using a custom-designed vector field), pocket boundary, ple component were available as a set of points on the streamlines
and the desired forward step distance based on allowable chordal and the boundary. When placing the CL points, we interpolated
error. We first offset the pocket boundary inwards by the tool radius linearly between the streamline points when required. Finally, a
to leave some stock for a contour-parallel finish pass. The stream- finish machining path is added along the offset boundary for cleaner
lines are then trimmed with the new offset boundary. We start at pocket walls.
one end of an arbitrary streamline, planning the first toolpath seg- In order to verify if this micrography-based toolpath was indeed
ment along the streamlines with cutter location (CL) points (G01 energy-efficient, we compared it with toolpaths generated using
mode) placed at maximum allowable distance computed from the a commercial program. Selection of parameters for comparison
chordal error and the streamline curvature. Once the path segment toolpaths, the machining trials, and the comparison results are
ends at the other end of the starting streamline, we search from presented in the next section.
Please cite this article in press as: Pavanaskar S, et al. Energy-efficient vector field based toolpaths for CNC pocketmachining. J Manuf
Process (2015), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jmapro.2015.06.009
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5. Veriftcation experiments and results must be considered with higher side-step distance between succes-
sive cuts (i.e. removing more material per cut) to compensate for
In the previous sections, we described our reasoning and the non-value adding time it spends in air-cutting if the same MRR
methodology to generate toolpaths for pocket machining using is desired.
principles of digital micrography for saving energy. To evaluate Our micrography based toolpath was designed to cut material in
if the toolpaths generated using our method are indeed energy- both directions (zig-zag like two-way cutting) without air-cutting
efficient, we performed controlled machining experiments. In between successive segments. Therefore, we used its side-step dis-
the absence of data on relative energy performance of exist- tance (i.e. spacing between two successive toolpath segments) for
ing/popularly used toolpath strategies (e.g. zig-zag, spiral) [5], we generating all spiral and two-way cutting toolpaths in Master-
compared our micrography-based toolpath to several alternative CAM. We computed this average side-step distance, approximately
toolpaths available from a commercial toolpath generation soft- equal to.023 inch, by averaging perpendicular distances between
ware (MasterCAM ver. 9). adjacent streamlines at randomly sampled points all over the com-
MasterCAM provides several alternative pocketing strategies ponent.
(shown in Fig. 4). We excluded the high-speed machining toolpath Then, we derived a side-step value for one-way toolpaths such
(F) that did not result in complete machining, and the true-spiral that the average MRR would be the same as for two-way for an ideal
toolpath (E) that was more than 2×slower, comparing the energy square pocket-machining operation. For all of our experiments, we
required to machine the same component by the five remaining used the same G01 feedrate (15 IPM = .25 inch per second), the same
toolpath strategies with our proposed strategy. ramping/G00 mode speed (70 IPM = 1.16 inch per second), and the
same depth (.07 inch) of cut. We determined, for a linear inch of
5.1. Generating toolpaths in MasterCAM for a fair comparison feed, the additional side-step distance to compensate for the air
cutting in the opposite direction of cut. For our feedrate of.25 inch
MRR has been the cornerstone of most research on energy con- per sec., taking the inverse, it takes 4 s to travel one inch. But for
sumption in machining. Several past works have considered MRR one-way toolpaths, we need to add the 1/1.16 = 857 s per inch of
as the primary driver of differential energy usage in machining air-cutting in the opposite direction and 2 * 0.07/.25 = 0.56 s of lift-
[7,3,4,10,11]. To instead highlight the effects of toolpath geome- off and plunging time, so it takes (4 + .857 + .56)/4 = 136% of the time
try on energy consumed in machining process, we considered how to remove the same material for one-way cutting as for two-way
to adjust MasterCAM’s input parameters for different strategies to cutting. For the general case, to compensate, we adjust the width
obtain an MRR similar to the micrography based toolpath. Even for of cut such that
the same feedrate and depth of cut, different toolpath strategies
result in different average MRRs based on the overlap between suc- 1 1 2* depth of cut
Width of cut in one-way G01 feedrate + G00 feedrate + G01 feedrate
cessive paths and the amount of non-value adding time (air-cutting = 1
Width of cut in two-way G01 feedrate
time). For example, a linear toolpath in zig-zag mode cuts more
material as compared to a one-way direction parallel toolpath for
the same total time since the one-way toolpath spends extra time , to get the same average MRR. Thus in our case, we must increase
in retracting the tool after each cut. Hence, to achieve the same the original.023 inch width of cut (side-step distance) by 36% for
average MRR, one-way toolpath strategies (e.g. X-parallel one-way) one-way toolpaths (.0312 inch, rounded to.032 inch), which we
Fig. 5. Photographs of components machined using the five MasterCAM strategies: (A) Constant overlap spiral. (B) One-way, X-parallel. (C) Parallel spiral. (D) One-way,
Y-parallel. (E) Two-way (zig-zag) X-parallel. (F) by our proposed strategy.
Please cite this article in press as: Pavanaskar S, et al. Energy-efficient vector field based toolpaths for CNC pocketmachining. J Manuf
Process (2015), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jmapro.2015.06.009
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JMP-331; No. of Pages 7 ARTICLE IN PRESS
6 S. Pavanaskar et al. / Journal of Manufacturing Processes xxx (2015) xxx–xxx
Toolpath Time (s) Energy (W-sec) A few possible avenues of future research may be as follows.
Constant-overlap spiral (MasterCAM) 1322 2,548,804
X-parallel (MasterCAM) 1340 2,576,525 • Energy efficient toolpaths by design: Generating 3-axis toolpaths
Parallel spiral (MasterCAM) 1285 2,545,579
Y-parallel (MasterCAM)
that are inherently energy efficient seems a plausible extension
1559 3,054,194
Zig-zag (MasterCAM) 1292 2,487,383 of this research. We anticipate, based on our proof-of-concept
Proposed (Micrography-based) 1013 1,975,765 analysis in this paper, that opportunities to save energy right dur-
ing the toolpath planning stage also exist. If micrography-based
toolpaths are generated, methods to automatically design a suit-
able vector field, trace equally-spaced streamlines, and to connect
then used as the side-step value in MasterCAM for generating all
the streamlines efficiently to form a complete toolpath must be
one-way toolpaths.
developed.
• Machine specific toolpaths: In addition to inherently energy-
5.2. Setup and toolpath generation efficient toolpaths based on the workpiece geometry, an
interesting area of research may be generating machine-specific,
Since this trial was focused on comparing the energy perfor- energy-efficient toolpaths. Differences in machine construction
mance of the two toolpaths, we made every effort to maintain a may result in variable performance of the same toolpath on dif-
fair comparison. We used the same input geometry in IGES format, ferent machines. This can be captured and used as an additional
the same workpiece block (Aluminum 6061 alloy), and an identical input in the streamline generation optimization process to gen-
cutter (3/32 inch, 2-flute, carbide flat end-mill) for all cutting trials. erate custom toolpaths. To our knowledge, none of the existing
We measured the energy usage in a machining trial using a Yoko- CAM software has the ability to optimize toolpaths for energy
gawa CW340 energy meter. The meter records the voltage, current, consumption and/or for a particular CNC machine.
power factor, and other parameters in each phase at 10 Hz. It also • Trade-off with other performance indicators: Different stages in
records the integrated active, reactive, and total power at each time machining have different performance objectives such as mate-
step. We computed the total energy used in a trial by computing rial removal rate in roughing, surface finish in finishing, etc. We
the area under the power-time curve (similar to Fig. 1). Details on believe that the proposed strategy will be most effective in the
energy measurements can be found in [13]. The photographs of the roughing stage where the most material is removed and the most
machined components, after de-burring, are shown in Fig. 5. energy is spent. In the finishing stage, on the other hand, energy-
efficient toolpaths may or may not result in the best surface finish,
thereby posing a multi-objective optimization problem.
5.3. Results
Acknowledgments
Table 1 indicates that a toolpath generated by using points on
streamlines from the research on digital micrography did in fact
We wish to thank Ron Maharik for providing us with the
result in a feasible toolpath that consumed less electricity than
streamlines and input geometry for the bear example generated by
any commercial software-generated alternative toolpath. Although
software partially developed under Nathan Carr. Machining exper-
this is only a pilot study, and many further experiments on differ-
iments for this work were conducted in the student machine shop
ent component geometries and cutting conditions will be needed
at UC Berkeley; we are thankful to the shop staff (Dennis Lee and
before guaranteed inherently energy efficient toolpaths can be
Gordon Long) for their help in setting up the experiments. Anthony
generated, we believe that we have proposed a feasible toolpath
Bailey Jr. helped with initial experiments to measure trends in
generation approach that also targets energy consumption as one
energy consumption, and Kevin Ninomiya and Cong Chen con-
of the toolpath planning objectives in addition to the conventional
tributed in conducting additional experiments and analyses to
objectives such as the cycle time.
measure energy requirements of preliminary versions of microg-
raphy based toolpaths; we appreciate their help.
6. Summary
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Please cite this article in press as: Pavanaskar S, et al. Energy-efficient vector field based toolpaths for CNC pocketmachining. J Manuf
Process (2015), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jmapro.2015.06.009