Abstract
The reuse of machining process, by which the process for a new mechanical part is determined by referencing to the existing and matured processes, is an effective way of improving manufacturing and supporting innovation. To conduct the effective reuse, it is necessary to express and retrieve a specific process. A kernel technique of the expression and the retrieval is to measure the similarity of part’s geometry variation during the machining. To address this problem, a general framework of measuring the similarity between parts is proposed in this work. The geometry variation sequence of intermediate process model was established, and then a method to measure its similarity was invented. Two case studies are rendered and the result reveals that the proposed method is effective and can provide the support for the process retrieval and reuse in industry.
Highlights
The manufacturing of mechanical parts is undergoing a major strategic shift from “automation” to “intelligence”, and the later becomes nowadays a popular topic
Hou et al [5] proposed a semi-supervised semantic clustering method based on Support Vector Machines (SVM), to organize the 3D models semantically
Because the similarity of process instances is evaluated based on the geometry change of intermediate process models, the machining process retrieved from case base is more consistent with the target object
Summary
The manufacturing of mechanical parts is undergoing a major strategic shift from “automation” to “intelligence”, and the later becomes nowadays a popular topic. Research on evaluating the similarity between process instances is based on three-dimensional (3-D) model retrieval. El-Mehalawi et al [2] used an Attributed Adjacency Graph (AAG) method to represent a 3-D model, and the AAG is further stored and measured, in order to conduct process similarity retrieval and reuse. A novel method of similarity measurement is proposed in order to provide better support for process instance retrieval. (3) A method to measure similarity of the geometry variation sequence is developed to evaluate the process similarity of parts. Because the similarity of process instances is evaluated based on the geometry change of intermediate process models, the machining process retrieved from case base is more consistent with the target object.
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