Automated Manufacturability Evaluation of Sheet Metal Components: A Review

Abstract

Accounting for manufacturability considerations at the product design stage is not only important but earlier they are considered in the design cycle, better it is. When computers are used extensively for design and manufacturing, automated manufacturability evaluation is a powerful option. This paper presents a review on automated manufacturability evaluation of sheet metal parts. While a large number of technical papers including reviews have been published on the general subject of Design For Manufactuarability (DFM), there is no paper in the literature that provides a review of automated manufacturability evaluation of sheet metal parts. In this work existing automated manufacturability evaluation systems for sheet metal parts are reviewed. The product, process and resource information models together with integration issues for automated manufacturability evaluation are discussed. Some of the future research challenges in this area are presented at the end.

A manufacturability advisor for spun and rollformed sheet metal components

“…A large number of technical papers including reviews [3][4][5] have been published on the subject of automated manufacturability assessment. Most of the these papers covered manufacturability by machining processes and only a few dealt with sheet metal components [6][7][8][9][10][11].…”

“…Most of the these papers covered manufacturability by machining processes and only a few dealt with sheet metal components [6][7][8][9][10][11]. Further, papers which have been published on automated manufacturability evaluation of sheet metal components are often restricted to parts manufactured by bending and other forming processes [12][13][14][15][16][17].…”

Automating Redesign of Sheet-Metal Parts in Automotive Industry Using KBE and CBR

“…A vast number of approaches for computer-based design and manufacturing iteration exist, though industrial close approaches for sheetmetal parts published in academia are deficient. Various other approaches for automated design and redesign have been presented for sheet-metal parts (Ramana and Rao, 2005;Soman et al, 2003;Xie et al, 2001), as well as some relevant research for machining (Das et al, 1996;Zhou and Gaines, 2003). Although many have approached the research issue of automated design and sheet-metal manufacturing iteration, research findings seem to stay within the research community.…”

“…Recent work on automated design for sheet-metal parts is available (Ramana and Rao, 2005;Soman et al, 2003;Xie et al, 2001). Xie et al (2001) present an internet-based system for intelligent design and manufacturing that has not been developed in collaboration with a partner industry and seems to have too many software components to make implementation practical.…”

“…Experiments on a real world component are shown, but the work seems to have been conducted without an industry partner. Ramana and Rao (2005) develop and present an extensive work regarding a rule-and plan-based approach for sheet-metal parts in mass production, including verification, quantification and optimization of manufacturing. The system takes a STEP file as input, considered beneficial for industry implementation as the majority of CAD-systems can handle STEP files.…”