Workpiece representation for virtual turning

In order to stay competitive with international markets, companies must deliver new products with higher quality in a shorter time with a broader variety of versions at minimum costs. Virtual manufacturing (VM) is quickly becoming an interesting strategy for product development. Primarily aimed at reducing the lead times to market and costs associated with new product development, VM offers a test-bed for the time-consuming and expensive physical experimentation. In this paper, several key issues for developing a virtual turning test-bed by using virtual manufacturing technology are discussed, i.e., representation of a workpiece with the capability of transferring error data used for machining accuracy prediction and reflecting the machining accuracy, representation of the swept volume of a tool for simulating turning process with high efficiency. The construction of surface topography, a basic model for machining accuracy prediction is also highlighted. The representations and relevant algorithms discussed in this paper are implemented in a virtual turning test-bed. A virtual machining and inspection system (VMIS) for ultra-precision diamond turning is presented and experiments are carried out to demonstrate it.