NC End Milling Optimization within CAD/CAM System using Particle Swarm Optimization

The authors have been set up an optimization procedure, based on Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) evolutionary algorithm, that has been enclosed in FeatureCAM, a commercial CAD/CAM software, to automatic determine milling optimal cutting parameters. The Particle Swarm Optimization has been selected because it is very effective to solve optimization problems characterized from complex objective functions and high bonds number. This algorithm also allows to obtain a near optimal solution with a very few iterations and then a computational limited time, characteristic very important to integrate the procedure in a CAD/CAM system.