Many products are designed with aesthetic sculptured surfaces to enhance their appearance, an important factor in customer satisfaction, especially for automotive and consumer electronics products. In other cases, products have sculptured surfaces to meet functional requirements. Functional surfaces interact with the environment or with other surfaces. Because of this, functional surfaces can also be called dynamic surfaces. Functional surfaces do not possess the property to slide over itself, which causes significant complexity in machining of sculptured surfaces. The application of multiaxis numerically controlled (NC) machines is the only way for an efficient machining of sculptured surfaces. Reduction of machining time is a critical issue when machining sculptured surfaces on multiaxis NC machines. To reduce the machining cost of a sculptured surface, the machining time must be as short as possible. Table of Contents: Introduction / Analytical Representation of Scupltured Surfaces / Kinematics of Sculptured-Surface Machining / Analytical Description of the Geometry of Contact of the Sculptured Surface and of the Generating Surface of the Form-Cutting Tool / Form-Cutting Tools of Optimal Design / Conditions of Proper Sculptured-Surface Generation / Predicted Accuracy of the Machined Sculptured Surface / Optimal Sculptured-Surface Machining

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Stephen P. Radzevich is a professor of mechanical engineering and manufacturing engineering. He received his M.Sc., Ph.D., and Dr.(Eng)Sc. in mechanical engineering in 1976, 1982, and 1991, respectively. Dr. Radzevich has an extensive experience in sculptured surface machining on multiaxis NC machines and machining of gears and gear cutting tools. He has developed numerous software packages dealing with CAD and CAM of precision gear finishing for a variety of industrial sponsors. His main research interest is Surface Generation: Kinematic Geometry of Surface Machining, particularly with the focus on (a) sculptured surface machining on multiaxis NC machines, (b) precision gear design and manufacture, (c) high-torque-density gear trains, (d) torque share in multiflow gear trains, (e) design of special purpose gear-cutting/finishing tools, and (f ) design and machining (finishing) of precision gears for low-noise/noiseless transmissions of cars, light trucks, and others. Dr. Radzevich has spent over 30 years developing software, hardware, and other processes for part surface machining and optimization. Besides his work for industry, he trains engineering students at universities and gear engineers in companies. He authored and coauthored 30 books, he authored and coauthored over 250 scientific papers, and holds over 150 patents in the field.