Peng Gaoliang

A desktop virtual reality‐based integrated system for complex product maintainability design and verification

Purpose – Maintainability is the ability of a product system to be maintained and is a design characteristic. The paper aims to provide an integrated system for complex product maintainability design and verification. It includes processes and tools that can be effectively used to plan, quantify and cost maintenance.Design/methodology/approach – An integrated platform for maintainability design and verification is designed. A case‐based reasoning method of maintainability design and Extensible Markup Language‐based representation of maintenance procedure information are presented.Findings – The paper finds that the proposed system is an efficient tool for complex product maintainability design and verification.Practical implications – Early and effective planning and implementation of a maintainability program can significantly improve the reliability and availability of product system.Originality/value – A desktop virtual reality application for product maintainability design and verification is presented.

Precise manipulation approach to facilitate interactive modular fixture assembly design in a virtual environment

Purpose – The virtual design environment offers users an opportunity to interact with a virtual prototyping rather than physical models and to build a fixture configuration in a realistic way. But the virtual reality (VR) environment tends to be inaccurate because humans have difficulty in performing precise positioning tasks. Therefore, it is necessary to implement precise object manipulation methods for assembly and disassembly activities, so that users can perform modular fixture configuration design efficiently in VE. The purpose of this paper is to develop a VR‐based modular fixture assembly design system, which supports the design and assembly of modular fixture configuration in a virtual environment.Design/methodology/approach – Geometric constraint‐based method is utilized to represent and treat the assembly relationship between modular fixture elements. The paper presents a hybrid method of rule‐based reasoning and fuzzy comprehensive judgment to capture the users operation intent and recognize ...

An Internet-based system for setup planning in machining operations

Setup planning is a complex and intuitive process. An efficient setup planning system is essential to cut costs and to reduce lead-time. In this paper, an integrated system based on Internet for setup planning is presented. The system is implemented based on a simple three-tier thin client-fat server architecture. The utilizing of (extensible modeling language) XML as a file format provides means for the transfer of information between various manufacturing systems. A methodology for setup planning is also presented, and in which the machining precedence, tolerance requirement and fixturing constraints are taken into consideration. Hence, a practical and global optimal setup plan along with fixturing features in each setup will be generated by this methodology. A case study is presented to illustrate the proposed system and to show the effectiveness of the presented setup planning methodology.

Towards the development of a desktop virtual reality‐based system for modular fixture configuration design

Purpose – Modular fixture configuration design is a complicated task requiring both intensive knowledge and experience. Automated or semi‐automated computer‐aided modular fixture systems based on computer‐aided design packages do not appear to have made a significant impact within the manufacturing industry. Modular fixture designers still prefer traditional systems such as paper or physical model; as such models provide a more intuitive interaction and immediate feedback. The objective of the paper is to present an application of the desktop virtual reality (VR) to develop an interactive modular fixture assembly design system.Design/methodology/approach – Desktop‐based friendly interface is designed and the low‐system requirement key techniques, namely assembly modeling and collision detection approach, to make proposed system run smoothly on a desktop PC, are presented.Findings – The paper finds that the proposed system is an efficient tool for modular fixture configuration design.Practical implications...

An Internet-Enabled Setup Planning System

In this paper, an Internet-enabled system has been developed to support setup planning, based on some state-of-the-art Java and Web technologies. The utilizing of XML as a file format provides means for the transfer of information between various manufacturing systems. A fuzzy set theory based intelligent approach for setup planning is introduced. In this approach, the setups are automatically planned based on key factors of machining practice, tolerance requirement and manufacturing cost. Finally, a case study is presented to illustrate the proposed system and to show the effectiveness of the presented setup planning approach

Using CBR to develop a VR‐based integrated system for machining fixture design

Purpose – A fixture is a special tool used to accurately and stably locate the workpiece during machining process. Proper fixture design improves the quality and production of parts and also facilitates the interchangeability of parts, which is prevalent in much of modern manufacturing. The purpose of this paper is to combine the rule‐based reasoning (RBR) and case‐based reasoning (CBR) method for machining fixture design in a virtual reality (VR) based integrated system.Design/methodology/approach – In this paper, an approach combining the RBR and fuzzy comprehensive judgment method is proposed for reasoning suitable locating features and clamping features. Based on the reasoning results, a CBR method for machining fixture design is then presented.Findings – The paper finds that the proposed system is an efficient tool for machining fixture design.Practical implications – The proposed system enables the designers to perform fixture design with automated fixture locating method reasoning and make a new fi...

A Novel Modular Fixture Design and Assembly System Based on VR

Modular fixtures are one of the important aspects of manufacturing. This paper presents a desktop VR system for modular fixture design. The virtual environment is designed and the design procedure is proposed. It assists the designer to make the feasible design decisions effectively and efficiently. A hierarchical data model is proposed to represent the modular fixture assembly. Based on this structure, the user can manipulate the virtual models precisely in VE during the design and assembly processes. Moreover, the machining simulation for manufacturing interaction checking is discussed and implemented. Finally, the case study has demonstrated the functionality of the proposed system. Compared with the immersive VR system, the proposed system has offered an affordable and portable solution for modular fixtures design

A pragmatic system to support interactive modular fixture configuration design in desktop virtual environment

Modular fixture configuration design is a complicated task requiring both intensive knowledge and experience. Automated or semi-automated computer aided modular fixture systems based on CAD packages do not appear to have made a significant impact within the manufacturing industry. Modular fixture designers still prefer traditional systems such as paper or physical model; as such models provide a more intuitive interaction and immediate feedback. In this paper, a novel virtual reality (VR)-based system for interactive modular fixture configuration design is presented. A multi-view based modular fixture assembly model is presented, which is convenient for information representation and management. In addition, the suggested strategy is both compatible with the principles of virtual environment, and can make easy the reutilize of element model. Finally, a fixture configuration design example is given to illustrate the application and effectiveness of the presented method.

Development of an integrated system for setup planning and fixture design in CAPP

The separation of CAPP and CAFD often causes conflict and delays for the product development. This paper overcomes these obstacles by describing a developed system that is capable of carrying out setup planning and fixture design concurrently. An intelligent approach for setup planning is introduced. In this approach, the setups are automatically planned based on key factors of machining practice, tolerance requirement, manufacturing cost and fixturing constraints from the feedback of fixture design. Further more, a hybrid RBR and fuzzy evaluation method based automatic fixture design approach is also described. In proposed system, the feedback of fixture design is to ensure that the setup plan for machined part is generated on the basis of feasible fixture plan. An example is presented to illustrate the proposed system

Fast collision detection approach to facilitate interactive modular fixture assembly design in VE

Fast collision detection is a fundamental problem to support modular fixture design in virtual environment. Through analyzing of the characteristics of modular fixture structure, a fast collision detection approach (F-CD) by combining element-based spatial partitioning and bounding volume checking is presented. A layer-based projection model (LPM) is established to reduce the numbers of elements to be testified. Thus the complicate hierarchical tree model is not required and the system memory is decreased to improve the efficiency. The establishment of LPM and the approach of separation plane based bound volume interaction checking are discussed with detail. Finally the experiment and result analysis is proposed to demonstrate the proposed algorithm.