Offset ellipse

Contacting a toroidal cutter (not shown) against an edge (cyan line), is equivalent to dropping down a cylindrical cutter (lower edge shown as yellow circle) against a cylinder (yellow tube) around the edge, with a radius equal to the tube-radius of the original toroidal cutter.

The plane of the tip of the cylindrical cutter slices through the yellow tube and produces an ellipse (inner green and red points). The way this example was rotated it is  obvious where the center of the ellipse along the Y-coordinate (along the green arrow) should lie. But the X-coordinate (along the red arrow) is unknown. One way of finding out is to realise that the center of the original toroidal cutter (white point) must lie on an offset-ellipse (outer green/red points). Once the X and Y coordinates are known it is fairly straightforward to find out the cutter-contact point between the cylindrical cutter and the tube, and from that the cutter-contact point between the toroid and the edge. Finally from that the cutter-location can be found.

Something to implement in opencamlib soon...

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