CAPP and its integration with tolerance charts for machining of aircraft components

Computer-aided process planning (CAPP), indispensable for industry automati on, is credited the technical index for the aerospace industry. The objecti ve of this research lies in developing a CAPP system to co-operate with fab rication of aircraft components, which are complicated and manifold in geom etric shapes and manufacturing processes. Process charts are sheets output from a CAPP system and are typically used in the aerospace industry to assi st machine operators in carrying out workshop machining tasks. Its contents include part name, part number, operation number, machining department, ma chining tool, machining operation, operation illustration, etc. Among these , operation illustration is the most tedious, yet important, data to make i n illustrating the part machining processes. As a result, the CAPP system a ddressed in this paper possesses a special feature of integrating operation illustration with process database. In this paper, the development of a va riant process planning system will first be addressed. The methodology for automatic generation of operation illustration, and its integration with pr ocess planning, is then discussed. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science B.V. All right s reserved.