A concurrent manufacturing strategy for One-of-a-Kind Products with complicated sculptured surfaces

In this paper, we propose a computer-aided system for concurrently designing and manufacturing a customised or One-of-Kind Production (OKP) mould or die which has complicated sculptured surfaces. Considering the OKP production characteristics of high customisation and concurrent product development and production, we believe that the concurrent consideration of both the design and the manufacturability of a mould or a die would be necessary. This concurrence can be realised by providing timely manufacturability information feedback after a design is completed or a feature is modified or added in the design. The other problem is that the sculptured surface geometry model of a mould or a die does not contain any machining information. Hence we developed an intermediate data model for capturing manufacturing features when we are modelling the geometric form of a mould or a die. The system is based on CADDS5 which is a commercial CAD/CAM system. Two modules for data extraction, coverting and modelling as well as for manufacturability analysis have been developed and added to CADDS5. Using this computer-aided system; a designer can interrogate geometry and machining constraint information through a user friendly interface to avoid defects and inefficiency resulting from an earlier design, and can finalise the design by making quick incremental adjustments. The system has been implemented in a mould and die manufacturing company in China. This implementation leads to less rework and shorter lead time.