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Integrated and Computerized Setup Planning and Fixture Design

[Activities] [Publications]

Last update: 07/15/2005

This page provides details of the "Integrated and Computerized Setup Planning and Fixture Design" project carried out in Intelligent CAM Laboratory (ICAMS) in the University of Cincinnati and CAM lab in the Worcester Polytechnic Institute with the collaboration of  Delphi Automotive Systems, sponsored by the National Science Foundation.

CAD/CAM systems are now standard engineering tools used to reduce the time and costs of product design and manufacture. However, the present problem is the ability to completely realize the potential efficiency of CAD/CAM systems due to the tedious and costly human interaction required. This has been a consistent complaint in the CAD/CAM user community. Computer aided process planning (CAPP) is is proposed to achieve the link between the CAD and CAM systems that will automate the process planning and reduce the human expertise interaction in the industry. Although a variety of commercial software could deal with some aspects of the process planning, non of then cab provide solutions to problems such as setup planning and fixture design. As a result, the task of the setup planning and fixture design is still done manually. Automating this task will give a tremendous improvement in the CAPP industry.

Acknowledgement and Disclaimer

This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 0099735. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.

Objective

The goal of this research is to bridge the gap in CAD/CAM integration by automating the tasks of setup planning and fixture design. The framework will allow automatic generation of setup plans and fixture designs for a web range of components that require machining.

Project Organization

Principal Investigator
Dr. Samuel Huang
Director, Intelligent CAM Systems Laboratory,
Dept. of Mechanical, Industrial and Nuclear Engineering,
The University of Cincinnati

Research Assistants
Nuo Xu
Anshum Jain
Rami Musa

REU Participants
Aaron Dawson
Patrick Schmitz
David Patterson
Andy Jen