Comparison of using ball cutters and large arc cutters for machining

The advantage of a ball cutter is that it does not need to consider the meshing angle between the blade tip shape and the workpiece surface shape during use. Regardless of the angle used, the shape of the blade tip contact point is always circular. However, the ball cutter requires a small step increment to ensure the quality of the precision machined surface, and when the machined surface is large, the processing time will become very long.

By using a much larger tool tip arc than a ball cutter, that is, by using tapered or elliptical cutting tools, the residual ridge height can be reduced without increasing the tool path density, and higher quality precision machining can be completed in less time.