Optimization of Tool Motion Trajectories for Pocket Milling Using a Chaos Ant Colony Algorithm

In order to generate the shortest and appropriate tool motion trajectories and reducing the nonproductive tool positioning time, the tool motion trajectories of pocket milling with contour-parallel should be optimized. A chaos ant colony algorithm (CACA) is presented to solve the optimization problem in this paper. In the CACA, ant colony optimization (ACO) is used to find out the local optimal solution of current position and chaos iterative is used to extend the searching spaces. To demonstrate the efficiency of the CACA, a numerical experiment is put forward. The results show that the algorithm could realize the optimization of tool motion trajectories effectively and rapidly in pocket milling with contour-parallel.