Designing a Modular Rapid Manufacturing Process

Abstract

Freeform Fabrication and additive fabrication technologies have been combined with subtractive processes to achieve a variety of fully integrated rapid manufacturing systems. The combination of separate fabrication techniques into one rapid manufacturing system results in unit manufacturing process integration, sometimes known as a hybrid system. However, the design methods or approaches required to construct these integrated systems are vaguely described or not mentioned at all. The final product from any integrated system is affected not only by the unit manufacturing processes themselves, but also by the extent the individual units are assimilated into an integrated process. A wide variety of integrated and hybrid manufacturing systems and current manufacturing design methodologies are described in this paper, along with their similarities and differences. Through our extensive review it was discovered that there are five key elements to a reliable integrated manufacturing system: process planning software, motion system, control system, unit manufacturing process, and finishing process. By studying the manner in which all other systems have been integrated, a table of successful integrated manufacturing system elements combinations has been created, documenting each of the key element choices, resulting in a variety of modular designs. A table of common obstacles encountered during manufacturing system integration has been compiled and presented in Section 4. This paper further discusses the importance of the five elements in manufacturing system integration, and how integrated systems is the way to move forward in the manufacturing domain. In the final Section, we describe our modular design experience to demonstrate how unit manufacturing process integration has increased productivity and the capabilities of a laser aided manufacturing process.