Modular Fixture Assembly Model for Virtual Assembly Design

To support modular fixture assembly design in virtual environment,a multi-view based modular fixture virtual assembly model is proposed.Instead of squeezing all assembly related information into a single model,three complementary views of assembly model,element information,function and structure,and assembly relationship are proposed to be used.The first view contains the detailed element information,while the other two explicitly capture the hierarchical function relationships and mating relationships respectively.These views are complementary in the sense that each view only contains a specific aspect of assembly related information while together they include required assembly related information.The proposed assembly model is specialized to accommodate the features of modular fixture virtual assembly design and applied in our developed prototype system.

Top-down assembly design using assembly features

The primary task of top-down assembly design is to define a product抯 detailed physical description satisfying its functional requirements identified during the functional design phase. The implementation of this design process requires two things, that is, product functional representation and a general assembly model. Product functions are not only the formulation of a customer抯 needs, but also the input data of assembly design. A general assembly model is to support the evolving process of the elaboration of a product structure. The assembly feature of extended concept is taken as a functional carrier, which is a generic relation among assembly-modeled entities. The model of assembly features describes the link between product functions and form features of parts. On the basis of this link, the propagation of design modifications is discussed so as to preserve the functionality and the coherence of the assembly model. The formal model of assembly design process describes the top-down process of creating an assembly model. This formal model is represented by the combination of assembly feature operations, the assembly model and the evaluation process. A design case study is conducted to verify the applicability of the presented approaches.

Evaluating Methods of Visual Assistance for Workers to Improve Quality and Usability in Individualized Kitchen Cabinet Assembly

In times of digitalisation, visual assistance systems in assembly are increasingly important. The design of these assembly systems needs to be highly complex to meet the requirements. Due to the increasing number of variants in production processes, as well as shorter innovation and product life cycles, assistance systems should improve quality and reduce complexity of assembly processes. However, many large kitchen manufacturers still assemble kitchen cabinets manually, due to the high variety of components, such as rails and fittings. This paper focuses on the analysis and evaluation of virtual assistance systems to improve quality and usability in individualised kitchen cabinet assembly processes at a large German manufacturer. A solution is identified and detailed.

Integrated Assembly Structure Design Within Concurrent Engineering

Taking a microwave product as an example, a system of integrated assembly structure design is presented. Getting design constraints from the upstream design section through product data management(PDM), the system generates the assembly scheme using the case? based method, then assigns the design requirements into each component of the assembly. The detail design for each component can be performed under these design constraints. In order to practise concurrent design, the system sends the final design result to the upstream section and downstream section through PDM to achieve information sharing and integration.

RESEARCH ON THE CONSTRAINT MAPPING FROM FUNCTION TO ASSEMBLY

Assembly sketch is not only the visualization of abstract function, but alsothe template of detail design. Two kinds of information are needed to create assembly sketch:structure and assembly constraint. Most researches are aimed at bow to obtain Structures fromfunction, but the problem of how to obtain assembly constraint from function is ignored. Followingthe definition of assembly unit and the classification of function, a hierarchical mapping methodfrom function to assembly constraint is put forward, and the mapping method includes two steps. Thefirst step is the mapping from function to assembly semantics which is assembly expression andaccordant with engineer's design habit. The second one is the mapping from assembly semantics tobasic assembly constraints that are convenient for computer to handle. The mapping method is appliedto DDMS (design, drafting and management system) successfully.

DESIGN REUSE METHOD FOR ASSEMBLIES IN CONCEPT DESIGN

Aiming at difficult sorting and retrieving complicated structure assembliesin assembly lib, a method for compartmentalizing assembly design resource by conceptual productstructure model is presented. The similar assembly retrieval mechanisms of symbol assembly relationgraph matching and symbol assembly relation graph similarity are discussed. The method is validatedby taking valve rod assemblies as example.

Comparison of the Feasible Schemes for HT-7U Assembly Simulation

The whole superconducting HT-7U Tokamak is a high-cost and large-scale complicated device. The assembly requirement of HT-7U device is arduous and strict. At present, there have been no guiding principle for the assembly of the device, but assembly simulation can help the engineer plan and make decision by an intuitional and visual way before its actual assembly. The problem is that which scheme is most suitable should be solved primarily. From current research situation and technology progress of assembly simulation, this paper explained and analyzed four kinds of technological schemes of assembly simulation in common use. Finally, we got the most feasible scheme that was suitable for HT-7U assembly simulation by comparing their technological issues and difficult points of simulation among the four kinds of feasible schemes.

Design methods of rhombic tensegrity structures

As a special type of novel flexible structures, tensegrity holds promise for many potential applications in such fields as materials science, biomechanics, civil and aerospace engineering. Rhombic systems are an important class of tensegrity structures, in which each bar constitutes the longest diagonal of a rhombus of four strings. In this paper, we address the design methods of rhombic structures based on the idea that many tensegrity structures can be constructed by assembling one-bar elementary cells. By analyzing the properties of rhombic cells, we first develop two novel schemes, namely, direct enumeration scheme and cell-substitution scheme. In addition, a facile and efficient method is presented to integrate several rhombic systems into a larger tensegrity structure. To illustrate the applications of these methods, some novel rhombic tensegrity structures are constructed.

CONCURRENT PRODUCT PORTFOLIO PLANNING AND MIXED PRODUCT ASSEMBLY LINE BALANCING

Reconfigurable products and manufacturing systems have enabled manufacturers to provide ＂cost effective＂ variety to the market. In spite of these new technologies, the expense of manufacturing makes it infeasible to supply all the possible variants to the market for some industries. Therefore, the determination of the right number of product variantsto offer in the product portfolios becomes an important consideration. The product portfolio planning problem had been independently well studied from marketing and engineering perspectives. However, advantages can be gained from using a concurrent marketing and engineering approach. Concurrent product development strategies specifically for reconfigurable products and manufacturing systems can allow manufacturers to select best product portfolios from marketing, product design and manufacturing perspectives. A methodology for the concurrent design of a product portfolio and assembly system is presented. The objective of the concurrent product portfolio planning and assembly system design problem is to obtain the product variants that will make up the product portfolio such that oversupply of optional modules is minimized and the assembly line efficiency is maximized. Explicit design of the assembly system is obtained during the solution of the problem. It is assumed that the demand for optional modules and the assembly times for these modules are known a priori. A genetic algorithm is used in the solution of the problem. The basic premise of this methodology is that the selected product portfolio has a significant impact on the solution of the assembly line balancing problem. An example is used to validate this hypothesis. The example is then further developed to demonstrate how the methodology can be used to obtain the optimal product portfolio. This approach is intended for use by manufacturers during the early design stages of product family design.

A Part as an Object of Assembly

Assembly is currently a very important element in the production process. We can also define it as the last stage in the production process. It greatly affects the quality of the product and especially the time needed to make the final product. The presented article is a contribution to the improvement of methods in the field of technological design of the product in terms of assembly, resp. in the field of methodologies known as DFA, which in its entirety means Design of Assembly. The general objective of improving the assembly process is in most cases reducing the cost of the product. With the gradual development of the technologies coming into practice, companies are focusing mainly on improving the elements of assembled products of the assembly system. This state can be achieved, for example, by reducing the number of components, so the complexity and laboriousness of the assembly will be radically reduced. This in turn leads to a decrease in unit assembly costs. Proper assembly settings can help a company succeed in the competition and thus contribute to a stable position of the company in the market. The aim of the article is to find the other objective indicators of assembly quality evaluation.

Semantic Entity Recognition and Relation Construction Method for Assembly Process Document

Assembly process documents record the designers'intention or knowledge.However,common knowl-edge extraction methods are not well suitable for assembly process documents,because of its tabular form and unstructured natural language texts.In this paper,an assembly semantic entity recognition and relation con-struction method oriented to assembly process documents is proposed.First,the assembly process sentences are extracted from the table through concerned region recognition and cell division,and they will be stored as a key-value object file.Then,the semantic entities in the sentence are identified through the sequence tagging model based on the specific attention mechanism for assembly operation type.The syntactic rules are designed for realizing automatic construction of relation between entities.Finally,by using the self-constructed corpus,it is proved that the sequence tagging model in the proposed method performs better than the mainstream named entity recognition model when handling assembly process design language.The effectiveness of the proposed method is also analyzed through the simulation experiment in the small-scale real scene,compared with manual method.The results show that the proposed method can help designers accumulate knowledge automatically and efficiently.

Improved approach to quality function deployment based on Pythagorean fuzzy sets and application to assembly robot design evaluation

Quality function deployment(QFD)is an effective method that helps companies analyze customer requirements(CRs).These CRs are then turned into product or service characteristics,which are translated to other attributes.With the QFD method,companies could design or improve the quality of products or services close to CRs.To increase the effectiveness of QFD,we propose an improved method based on Pythagorean fuzzy sets(PFSs).We apply an extended method to obtain the group consensus evaluation matrix.We then use a combined weight determining method to integrate former weights to objective weights derived from the evaluation matrix.To determine the exact score of each PFS in the evaluation matrix,we develop an improved score function.Lastly,we apply the proposed method to a case study on assembly robot design evaluation.

Business of Design Week 2011——A Grand Assembly of Designers From East and West

The Business of Design Week (BODW) 2011 will be held at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Center in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of China by the Hong Kong Design Center(HKDC)

ANALYSIS AND PREDICTION OF INTERFERENCE IN ASSEMBLING CURVED BEVEL GEARS

The phenomena of interference in the course of assembling curved bevel gears are ana. lysed and the corresponding prediction program of interference is established taking KlingInberg bevel gear as an exmple. The factors influencing interferenee are discussed and the coneept ofcritical cutter radius is proposed. Finally, a simplified approximate function between the critical cutter ra- dius and the other factors is derived,and the designing method of avoiding interferenee is provided. The analysis and caiculation are proved to consistent with a case of actual product.

The rational design of multiple molecular module-based assemblies for simultaneously improving rice yield and grain quality

Rice is one of the most important staple food for over half of the world＇s population,and a substantial increase in productivity and quality of rice grain will be required to feed a growing human population.Grain size and shape are the two important components contributing to grain yield and quality,because they impact both yield potential and end-use quality.

Methodology and Technology for Design to Cost

Product cost is one of the most important factors affecting product market share. Traditionally, product costs are estimated after they are manufactured. However, in this way, the best opportunity to control product cost is lost. In this paper, a method trying to reduce product cost at the design stage is proposed. This method is called Design to Cost (DTC). According to this method, product structure can be optimized with the application of value engineering and Design for Manufacturing/Assembly (DFMA) criteria in the conceptual stage of product design. During embodiment design, products are evaluated economically on the basis of the product model which includes manufacturing, assembly and test cost information. According to the results, products are redesigned before manufacture, and the production cost is reduced.