Automated process planning for the manufacture of lifters

This paper presents the methodology of a computer-aided process planning sy stem IMOLD_CAPP for the manufacture of injection moulded components, which will facilitate the standardisation of process planning and significantly r educe lead-time. The main components of the mould such as the slider; the l ifter and the mould base are considered in this system. In this paper the a utomated process planning for the manufacture of a lifter is described. A c ombination of the generative and variant approach (hybrid approach) is used for the development of the system. The input to the system is a 3D lifter model. First, the system classifies the lifter types and extracts the featu re parameters from the model. Each lifter type refers to a standard process plan template, in which a set of processes is presented in sequence. Secon dly, the system selects the machines, cutters, fixtures, and cutting parame ters for each process in the plan template, based on the actual dimensions of the features and constraints and rules defined in the system and the ava ilable machining resources. The process plan execution is then simulated on the screen step by step.