COMPUTER-AIDED PROCESS-PLANNING FOR MOLD MAKING

摘要

The Mold Fabrication Process Planner first described in [1] has been updated and integrated with the intelligent mold shop database. This integration adds easy user customization to the Mold Design Editor as well as the Process Planning modules. The Mold Design Editor allows tool designers to enter a mold design as a system of assemblies, components and manufacturing features. New assemblies, components, and features can be easily added to the system, and will automatically be recognized by all the applications that make use of the mold shop database. The Process Planner analyzes the design entered with the Mold Design Editor, and produces a collection of work orders which detail the manufacturing steps required to manufacture the mold, as well as precedence relationships between the work orders. The detailed information associated with these work orders is derived from the mold shop database, and can be easily customized to reflect the standard practices in a particular shop.