Collaborative Research: GOALI: Integrated and Computerized Setup Planning and Fixture Design

这个工业学术联络机会(GOALI)项目的目标是研究和开发一个集成框架，用于自动生成安装计划和夹具设计，适用于需要在车床、三轴机床和五轴加工中心使用模块化、标准或专用夹具进行加工的各种部件(棱柱、旋转和不规则)。安装规划和夹具设计是两项密切相关的任务。虽然安装计划受要应用的夹具的约束，但它也为夹具设计提供了指导原则。这种循环相互作用造成了“鸡还是蛋”的两难境地，这是主要的研究障碍。这个问题将按如下方式解决。首先，用图表示法描述产品模型的特征/公差关系。通过识别设计基准框架，将图形转换为基准加工曲面关系图(DMG)。在考虑生产方案(集成、分布式或组合作业)、夹具约束、机床能力和公差分解的情况下，DMG将被转换为设置图。然后进行公差叠加分析和安装方案验证，为夹具设计提供信息。如果成功，这项研究将产生基础和应用两方面的进展。作为基础研究，它将提供一种通用的方法来统一现有的装配规划和夹具设计的研究成果，实现计算机辅助设计(CAD)和计算机辅助制造(CAM)的顺利集成。它还将为基于数学的公差分析提供帮助。对于实践工程师来说，它将使他们能够将设置生成和夹具设计功能整合到现有的CAD/CAM软件工具中；从而显著提高用户的生产率。将研究成果纳入课程课程，将扩阔机械、工业及制造工程专业学生的知识面，使他们能更好地适应二十一世纪知识密集及多学科的工作环境。

The objective of this Grant Opportunities for Academic Liaison in Industry (GOALI) project is to research and develop an integrated framework for automatic generation of setup plans and fixture designs, applied to a wide range of components (prismatic, rotational, as well as irregular) that require machining in lathes, 3-axis machines, and 5-axis machining centers using modular, standard, or dedicated fixtures. Setup planning and fixture design are two closely related tasks. While setup planning is constrained by fixtures to be applied, it also provides guidelines for fixture design. The cyclic interaction creates the 'chicken or egg' dilemma, which is the main research barrier. This problem will be solved as follows. First, a graph representation is developed to capture the feature/tolerance relationship of a product model. Through the recognition of design datum frames, the graph is transformed to a datum-machining surface relationship graph (DMG). With considerations of production scheme (integrated, distributed, or combined operations), fixturing constraints, machine tool capability, and tolerance decomposition, DMG will be converted into a setup graph. Tolerance stack-up analysis and setup plan verification is then followed to provide information for fixture design. If successful, this research will yield both basic and applied advances. As basic research, it will provide a generalized methodology to unify current research results in setup planning and fixture design to achieve smooth integration of computer-aided design (CAD) and computer-aided manufacturing (CAM). It will also shed light on mathematics-based tolerance analysis. For practicing engineers, it will allow them to incorporate setup generation and fixture design capability into existing CAD/CAM software tools; thus, dramatically improve user productivity. The incorporation of the research results into course curriculum will broaden mechanical, industrial, and manufacturing engineering students' knowledge spectrum; thus, better preparing them for the knowledge intensive and multi-disciplinary working environment in the 21st century