Design for economic manufacture of small sheet metal parts

Arguments are presented for a consideration of the DEM of pressed parts on a basis of equipment and tooling used to produce the parts rather than consider a categorisation based on ‘type’ by industry. It is also suggested that a combination of both generative and variant techniques of process planning, in conjunction with a good classification system and data base, should be used by the designer to develop, store and retrieve the type of information used in cost-optimising the design of pressed parts. This paper outlines the elements of cost involved in the production of pressed parts and presents details of a computer-aided process planning system which will assist the designer to quickly obtain the information necessary to optimise the designs. Typical computer program inputs and outputs are presented together with rules that have emerged in pressing design to reduce the number of tooling stages required and therefore the component manufacturing cost.