Computer-aided manufacturing planning (CAMP) of mass customization for non-rotational part production

by Yao, Suqin.

This research is aimed at studying the key technologies of Computer-Aided Manufacturing Planning (CAMP) of mass customization for non-rotational part production. The main goal of the CAMP is to rapidly generate manufacturing plans by using of the best-of-practice (BOP) provided by specific companies. A systematic information modeling hierarchy is proposed to facilitate changes in manufacturing plans according to changes in part design. The Object-oriented Systems Analysis (OSA) approach is used to represent information relationships and associativities in the CAMP. A feature-based part information model, a process model, a setup planning model, and manufacturing resource capability models are established. A three-level decision-making mechanism is proposed for the CAMP. At the featurelevel, combined features are defined based on part families, and a process model is proposed to describe the information associativities between features and their manufacturing strategies, which include customized cutters and toolpaths. At the part level, graph-based setup planning is carried out by tolerance analysis and manufacturing resource capability analysis. At the machine level, multi-part fixtures are utilized to pursue high productivity. Cycle time is used to evaluate manufacturing plans. Computer software for the CAMP has been developed and integrated with CAD package Unigraphs. The BOP of part families is stored in XML format, which has good extendibility and can be read and edited by standard browsers. II