MANUFACTURABILITY ANALYSIS OF TURNED COMPONENTS WITH NON-AXISYMMETRIC FEATURES

Abstract

Design for Manufacturability (DFM) is concerned with simultaneous consideration of both design and manufacturing activities from the product conception stage to production stage. Now a day's increasing research attention is given to the concepts of DFM, which simultaneously considers design goals and manufacturing constraints to reduce lead-time and to improve the product quality. Consequently instead of the traditional build-test-redesign approach which is time consuming and costlier, the present thesis work focuses on the implementation of DFM methods. In the present work, a methodology has been developed for the simultaneous consideration of design and manufacturing aspects for the development of a manufacturability analysis tool for turned components with non-axisymmetric features. Different attempts have been made for improving design while considering manufacturing related issues simultaneously, and a variety of manufacturability analysis tools have been developed in industries and in academia. These manufacturability analysis tools are generally classified in to two categories: those using direct or rule-based approaches and those using indirect or plan based approach. Most of the reported DFM tools developed so far are used for different application areas. One of these application areas is manufacturability analysis of machined parts. Additionally most of the developed manufacturability analysis tools considers design goals and manufacturing constraints (such as, machining cost availability of machine tools, cutting tools, etc.) in order to identify and alleviate manufacturing problems while the product is being designed. Another aspect that needs further investigation is issue related with the interdependence among the various manufacturing activities and the complexities associated with them. The present study focuses on the investigation of the factors affecting manufacturability, representation of these complex factors and determination the manufacturability index to identify and alleviate manufacturing problems while the product is designed. Moreover a review of the existing literature on manufacturability analysis indicates that for a successful implementation of DFM techniques we should focus on the following issues. ❑ Simultaneous consideration of the design and manufacturing activities, ❑ Realisation of the available design and manufacturing databases, and ❑ Consideration of the functional requirement at different stages of design and manufacturing stage .