Areal Decomposition Methodology for a 5-Axis Milled Surface

An optical 3D measurement system (Alicona Infinite Focus Measurement G4) has widely been used to scan a surface. This system can generate the topography of the scanned surface and calculate the surface parameters. The cutting process of using the 5-axis milling machine associated with the ball end cutting tool creates cusp marks on the surface. This study focused on decomposing the cusp marks to investigate the characteristics and parameters of the surface at different scales (cusp marks, feed marks and tool marks) by using the Alicona IFM G4 with other software. The two approaches used in this study were form removal and filtration. The result of using the form removal approach to decompose the cusp marks was a more suitable method for this study since it left all the features on the surface except the cusp marks. The filtration approach tended to filter some useful features alongside the cusp marks, which affected the calculated surface parameters.