Mechanistic modelling of 5-axis milling using an adaptive depth buffer D. Roth a F. Ismail a, ∗ S. Bedi a a University of Waterloo, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada N2L 3G1 Abstract Mechanistic modelling of surface machining with a toroidal end mill is presented in this work for 5-axis machining. A graphical representation of tool movements (using tooth swept sectors or the swept surface of the tool) is rendered using a widely available rendering engine, whereby the in-process chip geometry and tool edge contact length are determined by an adaptive and local depth buffer. Owing to the chip geometry being highly dependent on the feedrate, a detailed derivation of the relative tool-workpiece velocity is presented based on the kinematics of a tilt-rotary table configuration. The mechanistic modelling is verified with experimental results and found to agree to within 7% of the peak-to-peak forces. Keywords: Mechanistic 5-axis force modelling; Adaptive depth buffer; Swept sur- face * Corresponding author. tel: +1-519-888-4567; fax: +1-519-888-6197; web: www.me.uwaterloo.ca/ ~machlab E-mail-addresses: djroth@engmail.uwaterloo.ca (D. Roth), sbedi@surya.uwaterloo.ca (S. Bedi), fis- mail@mecheng1.uwaterloo.ca (F. Ismail) 1