An Intelligent Design for Manufacturability System for Sheet-metal Parts

Abstract

A knowledge-based system used for the design of sheet-metal parts is described in this paper. The system is called Sheet Metal Advisor and Rule Tutor (SMAART) and acts as an advisor to engineers designing sheet-metal parts for high volume—low cost production using progressive dies. SMAART uses a commercial object-oriented development environment and has been designed to interface with different CAD systems. It also integrates a feature-based CAD module. When SMAART discovers the violation of a design rule, the engineer is alerted via an advisory window and then has the opportunity to change that part of the design to improve its manufacturability.

Near net shape manufacturing of metal: A review of approaches and their evolutions

“…“Product design” papers aim to evaluate, modify and establish the influence of product design on process performances, 19,29 feasibility, 25,26,28 design 15,28,30 and final product quality. 29 DFM methodologies are mainly used in this category, 15,19,25,26,28–30 and it is interesting to note that only two papers have investigated forging with different methodologies, one numerically (i.e. regarding cost performances improvement 19 ) and the other analytically (i.e.…”

“…Using a heuristic knowledge base database, product design feasibility can be analyzed for different casting and forming technologies. De Sam Lazaro et al 26 develop a feature recognition program for sheet metal parts.…”

“…regarding process design 15 ). DFM methodologies have also been applied for determining the feasibility of forming 25,26 and casting processes. 28 The approach is a powerful one and processes chains and process parameters have been designed using DFM methodologies for casting, 28 forming and additive layer manufacturing.…”

“…Overview of the NNS research: process innovation, process design, product design, material characterization, differential analysis, applied framework. Groenbaek and Birker, 76 Lewis et al, 52 Milewski et al, 53 Klug et al, 80 Behrens et al, 81 Vilotić et al, 82 Dean, 38 and Shi et al 61 Li, 18 Hirt et al, 68 Kim et al, 22 Chitkara and Bhutta, 8 Chitkara and Kim, 10 Chitkara and Bhutta, 9 Chitkara and Kim, 11 Netto et al, 12 Jeon and Kim, 14 Siegert et al, 34 Kapranos et al, 44 Kang et al, 43 Qi et al, 54 Taminger and Hafley, 57 Dirba et al 59 and Mamalis et al 20 Takemasu et al, 19 Tomov and Gagov, 15 Chu et al, 25 De Sam Lazaro et al, 26 Yin et al, 28 Konak et al 29 and Medellin et al 30 Blackwell and Wisbey, 73 Kottman et al, 74 Okada et al, 21 Yamamoto et al, 41 Curle, 46 Kim et al, 22 Arribas et al, 49 Qi et al, 51 Krishna et al 56 and Julien and Després 62 Tateno, 3 Bhatkal and…”

“…Interestingly, there appears to be a lack of general frameworks or computer-aided manufacturing (CAM)/CAD tools to support the general process of ''Design for NNS'' (i.e. the reported tools 2,[25][26][27] are largely focused on support of specific processes such as casting, closed-die forging and injection molding). Similarly, the general interactions between material, design and process are only rarely investigated and formally expressed (even although this is an area of work is suggested by many authors as a future development).…”