Optimizing material distribution for tool trajectory generation in surface manufacturing

Surface manufacturing is widely used in industry. Automatic CAD-guided tool planning has many applications in surface manufacturing, such as spray painting, spray forming and indirect rapid tooling. Generating tool trajectories for freeform surfaces to satisfy the given requirements is still highly challenging due to the complex geometry of free-form surfaces and the spray gun model. A CAD-guided tool trajectory generation system for free-form surfaces has been developed in our previous work. A material distribution model is also presented. Because of the irregular shape of automotive parts, the spray width may not be a constant. Also the path integration for a part with multiple patches may need the spray width to be changed. This will increase the material distribution deviation. In this paper, algorithms are developed to minimize the material distribution deviation because of the change of the spray width. The material distribution requirements can then be satisfied