A novel path generation method of onsite 5-axis surface inspection using the dual-cubic NURBS representation

Onsite surface inspection with a touch probe or a laser scanner is a promising technique for efficiently evaluating surface profile error. The existing work of 5-axis inspection path generation bears a serious drawback, however, as there is a drastic orientation change of the inspection axis. Such a sudden change may exceed the stringent physical limit on the speed and acceleration of the rotary motions of the machine tool. In this paper, we propose a novel path generation method for onsite 5-axis surface inspection. The accessibility cones are defined and used to generate alternative interference-free inspection directions. Then, the control points are optimally calculated to obtain the dual-cubic non-Uniform rational B-splines (NURBS) curves, which respectively determine the path points and the axis vectors in an inspection path. The generated inspection path is smooth and non-interference, which deals with the 'mutation and shake' problems and guarantees a stable speed and acceleration of machine tool rotary motions. Its feasibility and validity is verified by the onsite inspection experiments of impeller blade.