In mold machining, there are many concave machining regions where chatter and tool deflection occur since MRR (material removal rate) increases as curvature increases even though cutting speed and depth of cut are constant. Boolean operation between stock and tool model is widely used to compute MRR in NC milling simulation. In finish cutting, the side step is reduced to about 0.3㎜ and tool path length is sometimes over 300m, so Boolean operation takes long computation time and includes much error if the resolution of stock and tool model is larger than the side step. In this paper, curvature of CL (cutter location) surface and side step of tool path is used to compute the feedrate for constant MRR machining. The data structure of CL surface is Z-map generated from NC tool path. The algorithm to get local curvature from discrete data was developed and applied to compute local curvature of CL surface. The side step of tool path was computed by point density map which includes cutter location point density at each grid element. The feedrate computed from curvature and side step is inserted to new tool path to regulate MRR. The resultants were applied to feedrate optimization system which generates new tool path with feedrate from NC codes for finish cutting. The system was applied to the machining of speaker and cellular phone mold. The finishing time was reduced to 12.6%, tool wear was reduced from 2㎜ to 1.1㎜ and chatter marks and over cut on corner were reduced, compared to the machining by constant feedrate. The machining time was shorter to 17% and surface quality and tool was also better than the conventional federate regulation using curvature of the tool path.
