An approach to rapid manufacturing with custom fixturing

We present an approach for automatically generating complete process plans, including fixturing and CNC code, from high level shape feature part descriptions. The demonstration system is targeted at a broadly useful class of machined prismatic parts which includes sculpted exterior profiles and features requiring four and five axis indexing for manufacture. The approach introduces a set of process plan templates which are schemas for a family of process plans embodying a variety of fixturing strategies. The knowledge built into the process plan templates can adapt existing part hole features to be used for fixturing, can modify the workpiece to enable fixturing, and can create custom fixturing components for stages of the process plan. The process plan template system automatically transforms a given part design into a complete process plan. The user can provide optional guidance for this transformation and also can edit the resulting process plan to further extend the usefulness of this approach through customization. Domain knowledge in the process plan then automatically generates CNC code for a target machining center. This research is implemented as an experimental subsystem within our Alpha 1 modeling and manufacturing testbed environment, and has been used to design and manufacture working components for outside client applications