Study on the integrated intelligent CAD/CAM system for cold-and-precision forging

Cold-and-precision forging is an important part of advanced manufacturing technology. However, complexity of cold forging parts and long developing cycle make it difficult to design mould automatically. Therefore, the intelligent systems which apply artificial intelligent (AI) on CAD/CAM became an important research field. In this paper, the characteristics of design information and its processing methods are analysed, then a GC/GD-ANN-ES model established. GC/GD, ES, and ANN sub-systems process different information, cooperating to perform design tasks. A typical cold forging part, Constant Velocity Joint (CVJ) Inner Race, is illustrated to study the structure of each sub-system. GC/GD sub-system applied parametric design and constructive solid geometry technology to set up solid model and generate shape and dimension parameter files. ES subsystem comprises process planning, mould design and electrode manufacture knowledge bases, using rule-and-frame combination as knowledge presentation technology, and blackboard reasoning as inference engine. ANN sub-system helps to deal with some complicated non-linear prediction problems.