Another CAM paper in the CAD journal:
“Obtaining a spiral path for machining STL surfaces using non-deterministic techniques and spherical tool”
Here the idea is to create a finish toolpath as a smooth (?) spiral that covers the whole model, so that we don’t have to lift/retract the tool from the surface of the model - since this creates ugly toolmarks at the lift/retract/plunge positions.
It is quite hard to geometrically find an exact optimal spiral path, so instead an iterative approximate solution is sought. I’ve just glanced at the paper so this is all I can say so far. Looks interesting!