Visualization Process for Design and

Manufacturing of End Mills

Sung-Lim Ko, Trung-Thanh Pham, and Yong-Hyun Kim

Department of Mechanical Design and Production Engineering,

Konkuk University, CAESIT(Center for Advanced E-system
Integration Technology), 1 Hwayang-dong, Kwangjin-gu,
Seoul 143-701, South Korea
slko@konkuk.ac.kr

Abstract. The development of CAM system for design and manufacturing of

end mills becomes a key approach to save the time and reduce cost for end mills
manufacturing. This paper presents the calculation and simulation of CNC ma-
chining end mill tools using on 5-axes CNC grinding machine tool. In this study
the process of generation and simulation of grinding point data between the tool
and the grinding wheels through the machined time are describes. Using input
data of end mill geometry, wheels geometry, wheel setting, machine setting the
end mill configuration and NC code for machining will be generated and visual-
ized in 3 dimension before machining. The 3D visualizations of end mill manu-
facturing was generated by using OpenGL in C++.

1 Introduction

The flat end mills are commonly used in industry for high speed machining. They are
characterized by a complex geometry with many geometric parameters, which deals
with some complicated processes in machining with grinding CNC machine. In the
previous studies by Ko [1, 2], the development of CAM system was limited in 2D
cross sections of the tools and the results of simulation were restricted to the main
fluting operation. Ko already provided a machining simulation for specific 5-axes
machines in 2D. Dani Tost presented an approach for the computation of the external
shape of the drills through a sequence of coordinated movements of the tool and the
wheels on machines of up to 6-axes. The proposed method reduces the 3D problem to
2D dynamic boolean operations followed by a surface tiling [3, 4]. However they only
have shown the fluting and gashing simulations. This paper presents the process of
generation and simulation of grinding point data between tool and grinding wheels for
all grinding processes in 3D. The program was developed for prediction of configura-
tion of end mills. OpenGL was used for developing CAM system. The NC code of all
processes for end mill manufacturing will be generated automatically in the program
and saved in NC code files. These NC code files will be used for machining in CNC
grinding machines.

L. Wang and Y. Jin (Eds.): FSKD 2005, LNAI 3613, pp. 1133 – 1136, 2005.
© Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2005
 Visualization Process for Design and Manufacturing of End Mills 1134

2 Development of Software for Design and Manufacturing of

End Mills
There are several types of
CNC grinding machine tools
for end mill manufacturing.
In this study, the end mill is
machined on CNC grinding
machine tool, which has 5
degrees of freedom: three
axes in translation (X, Y, Z)
and two in rotation (B, C) as
shown in Fig.1. Tool is fixed
at tool holder, which has two
degrees of freedom; rotation
(C) and translation (Z). The
grinding wheels are arranged
at the wheel spindle, which
has 3 degrees of freedom;
two translations (X, Y) and
rotation (B).
Fig.2 shows the ar- Fig. 1. 5-axis CNC grinding machine
rangement of grinding wheels
for end mill manufacturing.
Wheel number 2 and 3 are
used for fluting and gashing
operations respectively.
Wheel number 4 is used for
1st and 2nd clearance op-
erations. The 1st and 2nd end
teeth are formed by using
wheel number 1. Fig. 2. Grinding wheels for end mill manufacturing

2.1 Basic Algorithm for the Helical Flute Grinding

The simulation algorithm for the helical groove machining in this study was based on
the assumption that a wheel with finite thickness consists of a finite number of thin
disks. Using the given wheel geometry and the required design parameters of end mill
as input data the computer program for predicting and simulating of the helical flute
configuration was completed. The program will determine the contact point between
circle and ellipse, which is the projection of wheel on the plane normal to axial direc-
tion of end mill. And the cross point between wheel and outer end mill diameter are
calculated. This point will be reference point to configure the flute shape and another
parameters. In this case, the diameter of end mill is fixed and Z-axes of wheel location
is also fixed and only Y-axes of wheel is changed to find contact point. The flute con-
1135 S.L. Ko, T.-T. Pham, and Y.-H. Kim

figuration was generated from the cross points between the given grinding wheel and
end mill. The determination of first contact point is very important. Most of end mill
geometry are determined using this point.

2.2 Simulation Results Generation of NC Codes

The end mill shapes are constructed by surface

modeling using triangles and quads. The
visualization implied for construction of end
mill shapes depends on the boundary of the
model. Fig.3 and Fig.4 show cross section of
helical flute and the simulation results of end
mill shapes.
Using the input data for end mill geometry,
wheel geometry and machine setting, the
computer program will generate the grinding
points for clearance faces, endteeth faces, gash
face. The visualization of these faces implies
the construction of the boundary of the sur-
faces. The OpenGL graphics system allows
creating interactive programs that produce
color images of moving three dimension Fig. 3. Cross section of helical flute
objects.

Fig. 4. Simulation results

The visualization of end mill relates to lighting conditions surrounding an object,

blending, antialiasing, texture mapping, shading. In addition, OpenGL was used to
 Visualization Process for Design and Manufacturing of End Mills 1136

exploit the possibilities of the projective Z-Buffer and shading techniques, which
offer and optimize the visualization delay for whole process.
The NC codes for all processes of manufacturing in 5-axis CNC grinding machine
were generated from the computer program based on machine coordinate and stored
in the same window with simulation results as shown in Fig.4. Each machining proc-
ess is carried out by rotation and translation of the axis of wheel and tool. The initial
and final positions of all processes were calculated.

3 Conclusion
The CAM system for design and manufacturing of end mills was developed to predict
geometric end mill configuration before machining. The NC codes were generated
from the CAM system for manufacturing of end mills in 5-axis CNC grinding ma-
chine.

Acknowledgement
This work was supported by Konkuk University in 2004.

References
1. Sung-Lim Ko, “Geometrical analysis of helical flute grinding and application to end mill”,
Trans. NAMRI/SME XXII (1994).
2. Yong-Hyun Kim, Sung-Lim Ko, “Development of design and manufacturing technology for
end mill in machining hardened steel”, Journal of Materials Processing Technology 130-131
(2002) 653-661.
3. Dani Tost, Anna Puig, Lluis Perez-Vidal, “ Boolean operations for 3D simulation of CNC
machining of drilling tools”, Computer-Aided Design 36 (2004) 315–323
4. Dani Tost, Anna Puig, Lluis Perez-Vidal, “3D simulation of tool machining”, Computer &
Graphics 27 (2003) 99-106.