Hole-Making on a Bent Thick Plate Available to Purchase

A method for cutting non-circular holes on a bent thick plate is proposed. Generally, in order to cut holes on large plates, a special-purpose 5-axis machine is needed. However, such a machine is unavailable in most machine shops. This paper provides a description of a method that utilizes a general-purpose 5-axis water-jet machine in place of the special-purpose machine: First, the bent piece is transformed into a flat plate, where the shape of the holes is reconstructed by considering deformation during bending. Then, after 5-axis NC data is generated, the holes on the flat plate are cut using the 5-axis water-jet machine. In the final step, the desired shape of the piece is obtained by bending the plate with its newly-cut holes. Some illustrations are provided in order to show the validity of the proposed method.