AN AUTOMATED PROCESS PLANNING FOR THE MANUFACTURE OF INJECTION MOULD COMPONENTS

摘要

Process planning establishes the methods and means of converting the raw material into a finished part. This paper presents an automated process planning system IMOLDCAPP for the manufacture of injection mould components, which will facilitate the standardisation of process planning and significantly reduce lead-time. Two important components of the mould such as slider and lifter are considered for the system. A combination of generative and variant approach (hybrid approach) is used for the development of the system. The input to the system is the 3D models of the mould components developed by IMOLD, a commercially available 3D injection mould design software. Firstly, for each component, the system classifies the component's type and extracts the feature parameters from the models. Each type refers to a standard plan template in which processes and sequences of processes are in place. Secondly, the system selects machine tools, cutters, fixtures and cutting parameters for each process in the plan template based on the actual dimensions of features, rules, constraints, optimization algorithm and the available machining resources in any mould shop. The prototype system has been developed on the HP UNIX workstation. The program is coded in C language using UG/Open API routines. A graphical simulation module has been developed to display the workpiece status after every process in a plan is executed.