Development of Basic Software for Skill-less Manufacturing of Molds and Dies

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The purpose of this research work is a development of basic software package useful for manufacturing high-quality molds and dies automatically without the assistance of skillful manufacturing engineers. In this three years project, the following technologies for the skill-less manufacturing are realized;1. We developed a new method for accelerating the inverse offset computation of the part surface, which is the most important computation for generating the milling path. This technology can achieve 10 to 100 times acceleration by using the 3D graphics devices equipped in personal computers.2. Laser sintering is a promising technology for fabricating mold and die directly from its solid model in computers. We develop a new fabrication system based on our "green tape" technology and did several experiments for evaluating the manufacturing time and surface quality of the fabricated objects using this technology.3. Subdivision surface technique is known as a powerful method for generating a smooth surface based on a set of point data on the surface. This technology is applicable for generating a high-quality milling path running through some measured points on the inverse offset surface of the object.4. By properly changing the tool orientation in machining, further quality improvement of the machined surface is possible. We developed several basic algorithms for efficiently determining the optimum tool orientation in such multi-axis machining process.