You are on page 1of 7

G Model

JMP-331; No. of Pages 7 ARTICLE IN PRESS


Journal of Manufacturing Processes xxx (2015) xxx–xxx

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Journal of Manufacturing Processes


j ournal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/manpro

Technical Paper

Energy-efficient vector field based toolpaths for CNC pocketmachining


Sushrut Pavanaskara,∗, Sushrut Pandea, Youngwook Kwona, Zhongyin Hua, Alla Shefferb,
Sara McMainsa
a
University of California at Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, USA
b
University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada

a rti c l e i nf o a b s t r a c t

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.

1. Introduction we build further on this notion to demonstrate the effect of toolpath


geometry on the energy consumed in the 2.5D pocket machining
In the recent years, saving energy in industrial manufactur- process.
ing processes has garnered increased attention. With the work
presented in this paper, we wish to demonstrate that it is pos-
sible to reduce energy consumption in a manufacturing process 2. Background
without compromising on its productivity or performance by
identifying and optimizing the underlying energy consuming phe- Most analytical models for CNC milling estimate the energy
nomena. usage on the sole basis of material removal rate (MRR) since that is
a strong indicator of the instantaneous work done in the process.
We consider the 2.5D pocket machining (milling) process for
However, the effects of toolpath geometry on the energy consumed
this work. Numerous research works have been published in the
in the process have never been modeled or studied.
area of toolpath planning for 2.5D pocket machining that target
various productivity targets such as improving cutting efficiency, In our study of energy consumption in CNC milling we per-
formed several cutting experiments to measure and identify energy
minimizing air-time, improving surface quality, etc. [8]. However,
consumption trends observed in the process as various toolpath
very rarely, if at all, a toolpath planning strategy or method is pro-
parameters such as the basic strategy, depth and width of cut,
posed that specifically minimizes energy consumed in the process.
step-over distance etc. were varied. We discovered that energy con-
In many cases, energy consumption is loosely tied to the machin-
sumption in the CNC milling process, although dependent on MRR,
ing time while implicitly assuming that optimizing machining time
is a much complex function affected by multiple factors. We found
must result in optimized energy usage. However, we found that this
that:
is strictly not the case as toolpaths with the same machining time
for the same component may still consume different amount of
energy depending on the geometry of the path [13]. In this work, 1. Toolpath strategy: No single toolpath strategy (topology) may be
universally adapted as “the most energy-efficient” strategy to
follow when generating toolpaths for 2.5–5-axis CNC milling.
For instance, a true-spiral strategy in MasterCAM was generally
∗ Corresponding author. found to be more time and energy efficient for non-rectangular,
E-mail addresses: sushrut@berkeley.edu (S. Pavanaskar), circular, or oval pockets, but the same strategy was no longer
sushrutpande@berkeley.edu (S. Pande), young@berkeley.edu (Y. Kwon),
optimal when the input pocket geometry was rectangular or had
zhongyin.hu@berkeley.edu (Z. Hu), sheffa@cs.ubc.ca (A. Sheffer),
mcmains@berkeley.edu (S. McMains). slender bosses/islands.

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
G Model
JMP-331; No. of Pages 7 ARTICLE IN PRESS
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
G Model
JMP-331; No. of Pages 7 ARTICLE IN PRESS
S. Pavanaskar et al. / Journal of Manufacturing Processes xxx (2015) xxx–xxx 3

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.

4. Generating toolpaths based on micrography principles

We now describe the detailed process of generating toolpaths


for CNC pocket machining using the underlying principles of the
micrography process. We first briefly describe the various steps
involved in the original micrography process for generating aes-
thetic textual arrangements. For complete details, please refer to
the original paper by Maharik et al. [9].

4.1. Micrography process

Fig. 3 illustrates the complete process for a geometry consisting


Fig. 2. Example of a micrographic text arrangement. Please refer to [9] for additional of two jigsaw puzzle shapes (Fig. 3a). Generation of micrographic
examples and details. textural arrangements for a given geometric shape begins with clas-
sifying points on the boundary of the shape into two types such
that the proposed vector field should be locally “along” (green)
Maharik et al. focused on two principal requirements when or “across” (red) the boundary at that point (Fig. 3b). This classi-
generating digital micrographic images: shape recognition and fication of boundary points is made using alignment constraints
readability of the text. First, for shape recognition and aesthetic that balance boundary alignment with curvature, coherence, and
appeal of micrographic figures, the text conforms to the outline streamline length considerations. A smooth 2-RoSy vector field [12]
shape. Also, since the text layout defines the outline of the shape, is then set up for each enclosed area while satisfying the bound-
the text line directions are aligned with the image region bound- ary constraints described in the previous step (Fig. 3c). This vector
aries when possible. Specifically, acute angles between boundaries field is then used to trace a set of streamlines using a modified line
and text directions are avoided. The text is placed in lines with low tracing method that simultaneously avoids the formation of short
lines, optimizes spacing, and prefers coherent end-points (Fig. 3d).
In this step, the vector field conditions may be selectively relaxed
at some points in the geometry to avoid cusps and shorter seg-
ments. Finally, text of user specified size and color is placed on
the streamlines in a specific order to ensure readability as well
as conformance to the shape (Fig. 3e). Although seemingly not
related to machining or toolpath planning, many underlying com-
putations made in the micrography process were useful for us to
generate pocket machining toolpaths as we describe in the next
sub-section.

4.2. From micrography to toolpaths

In order to generate pocket machining toolpaths based on prin-


cipals of micrography, we started with a vector field generated
in the micrography process. The “green” direction was automat-
ically determined in the process to be roughly along the X-axis
because that resulted in many longer paths. Further, we obtained
streamlines for the geometry from the vector field with an addi-
tional condition of having nearly equal spacing and known spacing
between adjacent streamlines. This spacing was determined based
on the overall size of the component geometry, size of the smallest
features (corners), and sizes of standard milling tools. Although we
obtained the streamlines that covered the entire geometry, we also
Fig. 3. (a) Starting 2D geometry, (b) boundary conditions for a desired vector field,
(c) a suitable vector field that satisfies the set boundary conditions, (d) tracing
needed a sequence of segments (including air-cutting segments
vector-field streamlines, orienting and ordering them, and (e) placing text along if needed) connecting them so that a complete continuous tool-
the streamlines [9]. path could be planned for efficient machining of the component.

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
G Model
JMP-331; No. of Pages 7 ARTICLE IN PRESS
4 S. Pavanaskar et al. / Journal of Manufacturing Processes xxx (2015) xxx–xxx

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
G Model
JMP-331; No. of Pages 7 ARTICLE IN PRESS
S. Pavanaskar et al. / Journal of Manufacturing Processes xxx (2015) xxx–xxx 5

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
G Model
JMP-331; No. of Pages 7 ARTICLE IN PRESS
6 S. Pavanaskar et al. / Journal of Manufacturing Processes xxx (2015) xxx–xxx

Table 1 6.1. Future work


Observed time and energy consumption values in cutting experiments

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
References
In this paper, we identified important characteristics that make
a particular pocket-milling operation energy efficient. Recognizing [1] Balogun V, Aramcharoen A, Mativenga P, Chuan S. Impact of machine tools on
similarities in the two computational problems of energy-efficient the direct energy and associated carbon emissions for a standardized NC tool-
path. In: Re-engineering manufacturing for sustainability. Singapore: Springer;
toolpath generation and digital micrography, we proposed tool- 2013. p. 197–202.
paths based on streamlines of a vector-field that could be [2] Castelino K, D’Souza R, Wright P. Toolpath optimization for minimizing airtime
energy-efficient by design. We tested this hypothesis by analyz- during machining. J Manuf Syst 2003;22(3):173–80.
[3] Diaz N, Choi S, Helu M, Chen Y, Jayanathan S, Yasui Y, et al. Machine tool design
ing a toolpath generated using principles from digital micrography
and operation strategies for green manufacturing. In: In: Proceedings of the 4th
with a MRR equivalent toolpath generated using commercial CAM CIRP international conference on high performance cutting (HPC2010), vol. 1.
software. We found that the proposed toolpath consumed at least 2010. p. 271–6.
[4] Diaz N, Redelsheimer E, Dornfeld D. Energy consumption characterization and
20% less energy than any (MRR- equivalent) MasterCAM generated
reduction strategies for milling machine tool use. In: Glocalized solutions for
toolpath. Although more research is required before generation of sustainability in manufacturing. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer; 2011. p. 263–7.
energy-efficient toolpaths based on the principles of digital microg- [5] Duflou J, Kellens K, Dewulf W. Unit process impact assessment for discrete part
raphy can be commercially viable, we believe that these results manufacturing: a state of the art. CIRP J Manuf Sci Technol 2011;4(2):129–35.
[7] Gutowski T, Dahmus J, Thiriez A. Electrical energy requirements for manu-
can convince researchers that in addition to MRR, the geometric facturing processes. In: In: 13th CIRP international conference on life cycle
characteristics of toolpaths must be considered when generating engineering, vol. 5. 2006. p. 560–4.
toolpaths to avoid energy waste in machining operations. We hope [7] Kalpakjian S, Schmid S. Manufacturing engineering and technology. Pearson
Education; 2013.
that our work can inspire further research on analyzing and reduc- [8] Lasemi A, Xue D, Gu P. Recent development in CNC machining of freeform
ing energy consumption in machining. surfaces: a state-of-the-art review. Comput-Aided Des 2010;42(7):641–54.

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
G Model
JMP-331; No. of Pages 7 ARTICLE IN PRESS
S. Pavanaskar et al. / Journal of Manufacturing Processes xxx (2015) xxx–xxx 7

[9] Maharik R, Bessmeltsev M, Sheffer A, Shamir A, Carr N. Digital micrography. In: [13] Pavanaskar S. Improving energy efficiency in CNC machining. University of
In: Transactions on graphics (Proc. SIGGRAPH 2011). 2011. p. 100:1–12. California at Berkeley; 2014 [PhD thesis].
[10] Mori M, Fujishima M, Inamasu Y, Oda Y. A study on energy efficiency improve- [14] Sarma S. The crossing function and its application to zig-zag tool paths. Comput-
ment for machine tools. CIRP Ann Manuf Technol 2011;60(1):145–8. Aided Des 1999;31(14):881–90.
[11] Newman S, Nassehi A, Imani-Asrai R, Dhokia V. Energy efficient process plan- [15] Stori J. Simulation based parameter optimization and constant engagement
ning for CNC machining. CIRP J Manuf Sci Technol 2012;5(2):127–36. tool path planning. Berkeley, Mechanical Engineering Department: University
[12] Palacios J, Zhang E. Rotational symmetry field design on surfaces. In: In: ACM of California; 1998 [PhD thesis].
Transactions on Graphics (TOG), vol.26. 2007. p. p55.

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

You might also like