Milling Cutter Data Structures for Use in Force Models

In this study we present a new general representation for describing a milling cutter and an internal data structure that systematically stores the cutting edge segment properties of the milling cutter. The intention of this effort is to enable commercial milling simulation software packages to communicate and store complicated cutter information, and thus enable them to include improved models developed in academic research. Examples with various milling cutters are given, and the versatility of the structures is demonstrated by using two different cutting force models with three different milling cutters. Force calculation time was decreased by a factor of four by using the internal data structure to store pre-calculated trigonometric functions.