Manufacturing process selection in engineering design. Part 2: a methodology for creating task-based process selection procedures

Abstract

Part 1 (A.M. Lovatt, H.R. Shercliff, J. Mater Des., 19 (1998) 205–215) of this paper identified a need for a methodology to help to create selection procedures for specific manufacturing tasks, where the material and processing operation have, to some extent, already been defined. This paper develops such a methodology, and its aims are twofold: firstly to guide the designer through defining the requirements of the design and identifying the attributes of the relevant subset of processes which must be considered; secondly to lead the designer through an evaluation of a design considering both technical viability (including the product quality during processing and in the finished part), and economic viability. A critical development in this work is the incorporation of process modelling into the selection procedure, as a tool for capturing the coupling of material and process characteristics which govern whether the processing and performance targets can be met.