Taking into account the global competitive environment and the impact of collaborative engineering environments on Small and Medium-sized Enterprises, it has now become necessary to develop new models and tools that can keep helping the designers and engineers in the decision-making processes related to the product design lifecycle. The tolerance synthesis purpose is to provide a rational basis for assigning tolerances to dimensions, and it has become an important subject in the product design process. The aim of this research work is to present an approach to support a concurrent conceptual tolerance synthesis evaluation process in a mechanical design within a collaborative engineering environment context, for example, Virtual Enterprise. The reference model proposed was developed and refined through a set of mechanical design study cases. The analysis and reflections of the study case presented in this manuscript are described in detail to show an example of how the different study cases were used to develop an understanding of how the reference model proposed can stimulate the conceptual synthesis evaluation of tolerances in the product design process.

High-speed turning is an advanced and emerging machining technique that, in contrast to the conventional machining, allows the manufacture of the workpiece with high accuracy, efficiency and quality, with lower production costs and with a considerable reduction in the machining times. The cutting tools used for the conventional machining cannot be employed for high-speed machining due to a high temperature induced in machining and a lower tool life. Therefore, it is necessary to study the influence of high cutting speeds on the temperature distribution in different typologies of cutting tools, with the aim of evaluating their behavior. In this paper, a finite element method modeling approach with arbitrary Lagrangian-Eulerian fully coupled thermal-stress analysis is employed. The research presents the results of different cutting tools (two coated carbide tools and uncoated cermet) effects on average surface temperature fields on the cutting edge in the dry high-speed turning of AISI 1045 steel. The numerical experiments were designed based on different cutting tools like input parameters and different temperature field zones like dependent variables in the dry high-speed turning of AISI 1045 steel. The results indicate that the dry high-speed turning of AISI 1045 steel does not influence significantly the temperature field zones when P10, P15 or P25 inserts are used. Therefore, the use of a dry high-speed turning method, which reduces the amount of lubricant and increases productivity, may represent an alternative to turning to the extent here described.