THE PLANNING OF MULTI-VOLUME ROUGH MACHINING OPERATIONS

The authors show that results from previous research in the area of ma chining economics may be used to obtain good solutions to the problem of planning the production of parts which have machined volumes which intersect one another. The basic problem involves the determination of methods of subdividing the total machined volume so that cost is mini mized; the method derived is based upon cost per unit volume, the majo r advantage being that a good solution may be obtained without conduct ing an exhaustive evaluation of the costs for each feasible volume com bination.