Abstract
Cutting tool selection plays an important role in achieving reliable quality and high productivity work, and for controlling the total cost of manufacturing. However, it is complicated for process planners to choose the optimal cutting tool when faced with the choice of multiple cutting tools, multiple conflict criteria, and uncertain information. This paper presents an effective method for automatically selecting a cutting tool based on the machining feature characteristics. The optimal cutting tool type is first selected using a proposed multicriteria decision-making method with integrated fuzzy analytical hierarchy process (AHP). The inputs of this process are the feature dimensions, workpiece stability, feature quality, specific machining type, and tool access direction, which determine the cutting tool type priority after evaluating many criteria, such as the material removal capacity, tool cost, power requirement, and flexibility. Expert judgments on the criteria or attributes are collected to determine their weights. The cutting tool types are ranked in ascending order by priority. Then, the rule-based method is applied to determine other specific characteristics of the cutting tool. Cutting tool data are collected from world-leading cutting tool manufacturer, Sandvik, among others. An expert system is established, and an example is given to describe the method and its effectiveness.
Highlights
Computer-aided process planning (CAPP) is an important link between computer-aided design(CAD) and computer-aided manufacturing (CAM)
The amount of design information in CAD is insufficient for process planning and manufacturing, while CAM only helps engineers generate a toolpath according to the manual selection of cutting tools and cutting data for each machining feature
There are three sub-criteria—the aspect ratio (AR), width (WI), and side (SI)—as shown in Equation (10)
Summary
Computer-aided process planning (CAPP) is an important link between computer-aided design(CAD) and computer-aided manufacturing (CAM). The amount of design information in CAD is insufficient for process planning and manufacturing, while CAM only helps engineers generate a toolpath according to the manual selection of cutting tools and cutting data for each machining feature. It is very difficult to choose the appropriate cutting tools for a machining feature. A computer-aided cutting tool selection system based on an available cutting tool library is essential in modern manufacturing, especially for CAPP. Oral et al developed an automatic tool selection system for the turning process based on rules [1]. With this method, according to feature information, selection is made from an appropriate cutting tool library, but the evaluation of multicriteria is ignored
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