Optimization of Line Configuration and Balancing for Flexible Machining Lines

Line configuration and balancing is to select the type of line and allot a given set of operations as well as machines to a sequence of workstations to realize high-efficiency production. Most of the current researches for machining line configuration and balancing problems are related to dedicated transfer lines with dedicated machine workstations. With growing trends towards great product variety and fluctuations in market demand, dedicated transfer lines are being replaced with flexible machining line composed of identical CNC machines. This paper deals with the line configuration and balancing problem for flexible machining lines. The objective is to assign operations to workstations and find the sequence of execution, specify the number of machines in each workstation while minimizing the line cycle time and total number of machines. This problem is subject to precedence, clustering, accessibility and capacity constraints among the features, operations, setups and workstations. The mathematical model and heuristic algorithm based on feature group strategy and polychromatic sets theory are presented to find an optimal solution. The feature group strategy and polychromatic sets theory are used to establish constraint model. A heuristic operations sequencing and assignment algorithm is given. An industrial case study is carried out, and multiple optimal solutions in different line configurations are obtained. The case studying results show that the solutions with shorter cycle time and higher line balancing rate demonstrate the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed algorithm. This research proposes a heuristic line configuration and balancing algorithm based on feature group strategy and polychromatic sets theory which is able to provide better solutions while achieving an improvement in computing time.

The Analysis of the Combined Territorial Machining and Contour Line Machining Based on the CAXA Manufacturing Engineer 2004

This paper introduces the rough machining of territorial machining and contour line machining based on the CAXA manufacturing engineer 2004, and gives an analysis of the combined machining of territorial machining and contour line machining. Finally, it proves the superiority of the combined machining by the example of high speed machining of an aluminium alloy lamina part.

High Speed Laser 3D Measurement System

Using the method of line structure light produced by a laser diode,three dimensional profile measurement is deeply researched.A hardware circuit developed is used to get the center position of light section for the improvement of the measurement speed.A double CCD compensation technology is used to improve the measurement precision. An easy and effective calibration method of the least squares to fit the parameter of system structure is used to get the relative coordinate relationship of objects and images of light section in the directions of height and axis. Sensor scanning segment by segment and layer by layer makes the measurement range expand greatly.

Pose optimization based on integral of the distance between line segments

In this paper, new solutions for the problem of pose estimation from correspondences between 3D model lines and 2D image lines are proposed. Traditional line-based pose estimation methods rely on the assumption that the noises(perpendicular to the line) for the two endpoints are statistically independent. However, these two noises are in fact negatively correlated when the image line segment is fitted using the least-squares technique. Therefore, we design a new error function expressed by the average integral of the distance between line segments. Three least-squares techniques that optimize both the rotation and translation simultaneously are proposed in which the new error function is exploited. In addition, Lie group formalism is utilized to describe the pose parameters, and then, the optimization problem can be solved by means of a simple iterative least squares method. To enhance the robustness to outliers existing in the match data, an M-estimation method is developed to convert the pose optimization problem into an iterative reweighted least squares problem. The proposed methods are validated through experiments using both synthetic and real-world data. The experimental results show that the proposed methods yield a clearly higher precision than the traditional methods.