DEVELOPMENT AND IMPLEMENTATION OF A FEATURE BASED SEMI-AUTOMATIC PRODUCTION SYSTEM

Manufacturing cost reduction and in-time delivery to market are two key parameters for evaluation of system’s effectiveness in production. Having this in mind, automation of production systems plays an essential role in this procedure developing the capabilities of companies in ever-growing competitive industry. Towards this goal, a feature based semi-automatic production system has been designed and implemented by a sample part production in this study. The concept of machining feature has been used for integration process as an inter-relating tool between different modules of the system. In the developed system, the CAD model of part is being presented to system and after feature recognition, the geometric information of the recognized features is being extracted by post-process module. Afterwards, the manufacturing post-process module is being activated extracting the needed machining information for suitable production process. Utilizing Labview® and its connectivity functions, a robust relationship is being implemented with Computer Numerically Controlled (CNC) machine for real part production. Finally, a sample lathe part was manufactured using implemented production system representing the capabilities of the developed framework

Keywords:

CNC machine , Feature based production , Feature recognition , Part production automation , Labview® connectivity