A milling cutting tool selection method for machining features considering energy consumption in the STEP-NC framework

The application of the STEP-NC standard boosts the CNC machining industry towards integration plus automation. Cutting tool selection, considered as a primary task in the machining process, is generally carried out by the experience of the technologist, which cannot fit the highly integrated and automated STEP-NC environment. Therefore, a model-based cutting tool selection method is proposed in this paper. Energy consumption is introduced as an evaluation factor for the model of the cutting tool selection and the model's data structure compatible with STEP-NC is established. The proposed model formulates the relationship between the cutting tool plus the related parameters and the energy consumption to provide a reliable evaluation criterion for the cutting tool selection. A genetic algorithm is used to guarantee that an optimized solution can be reached in the selection model conforming to STEP-NC standard, thus the information in the selection process can be recorded structurally to sound for further use. The actual cutting experiments of typical parts as case studies were tested to validate the effectiveness and feasibility of this cutting tool selection method.