Micro-scale Realization of Compliant Mechanisms:Manufacturing Processes and Constituent Materials-A Review

Compliant micromechanisms(CMMs)acquire mobility from the deflection of elastic members and have been proven to be robust by millions of silicon MEMS devices.However,the limited deflection of silicon impedes the realization of more sophisticated CMMs,which often require larger deflections.Recently,some novel manufacturing processes have emerged but are not well known by the community.In this paper,the realization of CMMs is reviewed,aiming to provide help to mechanical designers to quickly find the proper realization method for their CMM designs.To this end,the literature surveyed was classified and statistically analyzed,and representative processes were summarized individually to reflect the state of the art of CMM manufacturing.Furthermore,the features of each process were collected into tables to facilitate the reference of readers,and the guidelines for process selection were discussed.The review results indicate that,even though the silicon process remains dominant,great progress has been made in the development of polymer-related and composite-related processes,such as micromolding,SU-8 process,laser ablation,3D printing,and the CNT frameworking.These processes result in constituent materials with a lower Young’s modulus and larger maximum allowable strain than silicon,and therefore allow larger deflection.The geometrical capabilities(e.g.,aspect ratio)of the realization methods should also be considered,because different types of CMMs have different requirements.We conclude that the SU-8 process,3D printing,and carbon nanotube frameworking will play more important roles in the future owing to their excellent comprehensive capabilities.

Accessibility analysis in manufacturing processes using visibility cones

Accessibility is a kind of important design feature of products,and accessibility analysis has been acknowledged as a powerful tool for solving computational manufacturing problems arising from different manufacturing processes.After exploring the relations among approachability,accessibility and visibility,a general method for accessibility analysis using visibility cones (VC) is proposed.With the definition of VC of a point,three kinds of visibility of a feature,namely complete visibility cone (CVC),partial visibility cone (PVC) and local visibility cone (LVC),are defined.A novel approach to computing VCs is formulated by identifying C-obstacles in the C-space,for which a general and efficient algorithm is proposed and implemented by making use of visibility culling.Lastly,we discuss briefly how to realize accessibility analysis in numerically controlled (NC) machining planning,coordinate measuring machines (CMMs) inspection planning and assembly sequence planning with the proposed methods.

Diversified manufacturing processes and multiple mineral sources:Features of Warring States bronze vessels excavated from Chutai Cemetery M1,Anhui Province

Northern Anhui was an important region for diverse bronze culture convergence and extensive metal resource circulation in the Pre-Qin Period.In this paper,metallographic microstructure analysis,chemical composition analysis,and lead isotope ratio analysis were conducted on 12 samples of 6 Warring States Period(476–221 BCE)bronze vessels excavated from Chutai Cemetery M1,Fuyang,Anhui Province,revealing the integrated application of diversified manufacturing processes,such as casting,forging,cold working,and welding and multiple metal minerals.The analytical results showed that 2 Ding vessels(鼎)were made by casting,and 2 He vessels(盒)and 2 Dui vessels(敦)were made by forging followed by cold working.These two types of bronze vessels made by different manufacturing processes have significantly distinct alloy ratios and mineral sources,among which the Cu and Sn contents of the 2 cast bronze vessels are lower and the Pb content is higher,while the Cu and Sn contents of the 4 forged bronze vessels are higher and the Pb content is lower.The lead minerals of the two types of bronze vessels might come from Western Henan and the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River,respectively.In addition,the 3 pieces of solder used to weld bronze vessels were all made of pure Sn,their metal minerals should come from the densely distributed area of tin ore in Southern China,and Sn solders were mainly discovered in the Chu culture area during the Eastern Zhou Period.

Modular supervisory control for multi-floor manufacturing processes

Due to space availability limitations and high land costs,there is an increasing development of multi-floor manufacturing(MFM)systems in urban and industrial areas.The problem of coordination in a multi-floor manufacturing process,in the Ramadge Wonham framework,is introduced.The manufacturing chain of each floor and the elevator system are modeled in the form of finite deterministic automata.The models of the multi-floor manufacturing process are parametric with respect to the number of floors and the number of manufacturing machines on each floor.The coordination desired performance is formulated in the form of desired regular languages in analytic forms.The languages are realized by appropriate supervisors in the form of finite deterministic automata.The models of the supervisors are also parametric with respect to the number of floors and the number of manufacturing machines on each floor.The total control of the coordination of the multi-floor manufacturing process is accomplished via a modular supervisory control architecture.The complexity of the supervisors as well as the complexity of the total modular supervisory architecture are determined in analytic forms with respect to the number of floors and the number of manufacturing machines on each floor.The special case of a two floor manufacturing process is presented as an illustrative example.

Advances of physics-based precision modeling and simulation for manufacturing processes

The development of manufacturing process concerns precision, comprehensiveness, agileness, high efficiency and low cost. The numerical simulation has become an important method for process design and optimization. Physics-based modeling was proposed to promote simulations with a high accuracy. In this paper, three cases, on material properties, precise boundary conditions, and micro-scale physical models, have been discussed to demonstrate how physics-based modeling can improve manufacturing simulation. By using this method, manu- facturing process can be modeled precisely and optimized for getting better performance.

Exploration and Application Practice of Energy Conservation Theory and Method in Steel Manufacturing Process System

This article briefly discusses the theoretical basis and overall goals of energy conservation in the steel manufacturing process system.It is proposed that in the process of implementing system energy conservation,it is necessary to fully recognize and utilize the characteristics and functional advantages of the steel manufacturing process,pay more attention to energy quality,firmly grasp the overall goal of system optimization,focus on the integrated optimization of gas,steam,and waste heat systems,and propose the idea of constructing a"steel chemi-cal gas electricity heating cooling multi generation system".Based on practice,the main principles,models,and effects of implementing systematic energy conservation in steel enterprises have been proposed.

Decomposition Methods for Manufacturing System Scheduling:A Survey

Manufacturing is the application of labor, tools,machines, chemical and biological processing, to an original raw material by changing its physical and geometrical characteristics, in order to make finished products. Since the first industrial revolution, to accommodate the large-scale production,tremendous changes have happened to manufacturing through the innovations of technology, organization, management, transportation and communication. This work first reviews the highvolume low-mix process by focusing on the quantity production,transfer line and single model assembly line. Then, it reviews the high-volume high-mix process. For such a process type,mixed/multi model assembly line is usually adopted. Hence,two main decisions on them, i.e., balancing and, sequencing are reviewed. Thereafter, it discusses the low-volume high-mix process in detail. Then, technology gap and future work is discussed, and at last, conclusions are given.

WEB-BASED MANUFACTURING PROCESS DEVELOPER

Product and manufacturing process developments are knowledge intensive. For rapid product developments in today′s competitive global marketplace, we need tools to facilitate the effective utilization of critical design and manufacturing knowledge obtained during the previous product developments. The Internet technology has very rapidly evolved over past few years. The web is being increasingly used to support various activities of the pro duct development process. Java is a programming language that is highly tuned for the web environment. This paper is concerned with providing the solution of web based manufacturing process development. The architecture of web based application and the implementation of web based manufacturing process developer are discussed.

Consideration of green intelligent steel processes and narrow window stability control technology on steel quality

In order to promote the intelligent transformation and upgrading of the steel industry, intelligent technology features based on the current situation and challenges of the steel industry are discussed in this paper. Based on both domestic and global research, functional analysis, reasonable positioning, and process optimization of each aspect of steel making are expounded. The current state of molten steel quality and implementation under narrow window control is analyzed. A method for maintaining stability in the narrow window control technology of steel quality is proposed, controlled by factors including composition, temperature, time, cleanliness, and consumption(raw material). Important guidance is provided for the future development of a green and intelligent steel manufacturing process.

Operation optimization of the steel manufacturing process: A brief review

Against the realistic background of excess production capacity, product structure imbalance, and high material and energy consumption in steel enterprises, the implementation of operation optimization for the steel manufacturing process is essential to reduce the production cost, increase the production or energy efficiency, and improve production management. In this study, the operation optimization problem of the steel manufacturing process, which needed to go through a complex production organization from customers' orders to workshop production, was analyzed. The existing research on the operation optimization techniques, including process simulation, production planning, production scheduling, interface scheduling, and scheduling of auxiliary equipment, was reviewed. The literature review reveals that, although considerable research has been conducted to optimize the operation of steel production, these techniques are usually independent and unsystematic.Therefore, the future work related to operation optimization of the steel manufacturing process based on the integration of multi technologies and the intersection of multi disciplines were summarized.

Calculating Method for Influence of Material Flow on Energy Consumption in Steel Manufacturing Process

From the viewpoint of systems energy conservation, the influences of material flow on its energy consumption in a steel manufacturing process is an important subject. The quantitative analysis of the relationship between material flow and the energy intensity is useful to save energy in steel industry. Based on the concept of standard material flow diagram, all possible situations of ferric material flow in steel manufacturing process are analyzed. The expressions of the influence of material flow deviated from standard material flow diagram on energy consumption are put forward.

Locating Error Considering Dimensional Errors Modeling for Multistation Manufacturing System

Multistation machining process is widely applied in contemporary manufacturing environment. Modeling of variation propagation in multistation machining process is one of the most important research scenarios. Due to the existence of multiple variation streams, it is challenging to model and analyze variation propagation in a multi-station system. Current approaches to error modeling for multistation machining process are not explicit enough for error control and ensuring final product quality. In this paper, a mathematic model to depict the part dimensional variation of the complex multistation manufacturing process is formulated. A linear state space dimensional error propagation equation is established through kinematics analysis of the influence of locating parameter variations and locating datum variations on dimensional errors, so the dimensional error accumulation and transformation within the multistation process are quantitatively described. A systematic procedure to build the model is presented, which enhances the way to determine the variation sources in complex machining systems. A simple two-dimensional example is used to illustrate the proposed procedures. Finally, an industrial case of multistation machining part in a manufacturing shop is given to testify the validation and practicability of the method. The proposed analytical model is essential to quality control and improvement for multistation systems in machining quality forecasting and design optimization.

Influence of Material Flow in Steel Manufacturing Process on Atmosphere Environmental Load

The standard material flow diagram in steel manufacturing process was proposed to analyze the influences of various material flows on environmental load of 1tof final product.Two influence factors and reducing measures of environmental load were pointed out.The environmental load was appraised for a typical technological process in a Chinese steel plant.

Manufacturing Process Selection of “Green” Oil Palm Natural Fiber Reinforced Polyurethane Composites Using Hybrid TEA Criteria Requirement and AHP Method for Automotive Crash Box

In this study,the best manufacturing process will be selected to build an automotive crash box using green oil palm natural fibre-reinforced polyurethane composite materials.This paper introduces an approach consist of technical aspects(T),the economic point of view(E)and availability(A),and it’s also called as TEA requirement.This approach was developed with the goal of assisting the design engineer in the selection of the best manufacturing process during the design phase at the criteria selection stage.In this study,the TEA requirement will integrate with the analytical hierarchy process(AHP)to assist decision makers or manufacturing engineers in determining the most appropriate manufacturing process to be employed in the manufacture of a composite automotive crash box(ACB)at the early stage of the product development process.It is obvious that a major challenge in the manufacturing selection process is lack of information regarding manufacturing of ACB using natural fibre composite(NFC).There have been no previous studies that examined ranking manufacturability processes in terms of their suitability.Therefore,the TEA-AHP hybrid method was introduced to provide unprejudiced criteria-ranking selection prior to evaluation of pairwise comparisons.At the end of this study,the pulforming process was selected as the best manufacturing process for fabrication of the ACB structural component.

An Edge-Fog-Cloud Computing-Based Digital Twin Model for Prognostics Health Management of Process Manufacturing Systems

The prognostics health management(PHM)fromthe systematic viewis critical to the healthy continuous operation of processmanufacturing systems(PMS),with different kinds of dynamic interference events.This paper proposes a three leveled digital twinmodel for the systematic PHMof PMSs.The unit-leveled digital twinmodel of each basic device unit of PMSs is constructed based on edge computing,which can provide real-time monitoring and analysis of the device status.The station-leveled digital twin models in the PMSs are designed to optimize and control the process parameters,which are deployed for the manufacturing execution on the fog server.The shop-leveled digital twin maintenancemodel is designed for production planning,which gives production instructions fromthe private industrial cloud server.To cope with the dynamic disturbances of a PMS,a big data-driven framework is proposed to control the three-level digital twin models,which contains indicator prediction,influence evaluation,and decisionmaking.Finally,a case study with a real chemical fiber system is introduced to illustrate the effectiveness of the digital twin model with edge-fog-cloud computing for the systematic PHM of PMSs.The result demonstrates that the three-leveled digital twin model for the systematic PHM in PMSs works well in the system’s respects.

Attitude Analysis in Process Conflict for C919 Aircraft Manufacturing

Based on the option prioritization in graph model for conflict resolution of two decision makers(DMs),new logical and matrix representations of four stability concepts for DMs′attitude are proposed.The logical representation of attitude is defined,and converted to the matrix form in order to develop a decision support system(DSS)efficiently.Compared with existing definitions of DMs′attitude based on states,the proposed definitions of attitude based on options are convenient and more effective to generate preferences since that of states can be significantly larger than that of options in a large conflict.In addition,it is easier to obtain the information of the prioritization of option statements than to obtain preference of states for users.The proposed representations are applied to the process conflict during aircraft manufacturing to demonstrate the efficiency of the new approach.

Mechanical and Rheological Properties of Bamboo Pulp Fiber Reinforced High Density Polyethylene Composites:Influence of Nano CaCO_(3)Treatment and Manufacturing Process with Different Pressure Ratings

In order to investigate the effect of the relative motion of nano CaCO_(3)reinforced bamboo pulp fiber(BPF)/HDPE composite components on the mechanical performance,a comparative study was performed.BPF was treated by nano CaCO_(3)blending(BM)and impregnation modification(IM)technology.The composites were produced using hot press(HPMP),extrusion(EMP)and injection molding process(IMP).The physical morphology of BPF was similar at different manufacturing processes.Compared to the samples manufactured by HPMP,a decrease in the(specific)flexural strength of BPF/HDPE composites and an increase in those of composites treated by nano CaCO_(3)manufactured by EMP and IMP were observed.The injection molded composites exhibited the best values in the(specific)impact strength,(specific)tensile properties.IM had a greater effect on the rheological behavior of the composites than BM,and nano CaCO_(3)treatment most effectively affected the performance of the extrusion molded composites.

Influence of Manufacturing Process of Warp-knitted Vascular Prosthesis on the Wall Homogeneity

This paper reports the evolution of textile structure and mechanical properties of vascular prosthesis in the level of the whole prosthesis and the constituent filaments with respect to the manufacturing process. The tubular wall of the prosthesis is divided circumferentially into three zones; basic line (BL), remeshing line ( RL) and guide line ( GL). Some heterogeneity has been observed on the tubular wall in terms of stitch structure of the prosthesis and linear density of the constituent filaments. The breaking position of the prosthesis under circumferential tensile localizes preferentially in remeshing line that is the weakest zone by warp knitting with double needle bed. Furthermore, the statistical differences of the mechanical properties of the filaments of zone RL, GL and BL have been confirmed too. It is predictable that the deterioration of prosthesis, under physiological loads (periodical pulse blood pressure etc.), could happen firstly in the weaker zone in vivo.

Manufacturing Process Oriented Environmental Friendly Assessment with Fuzzy Analytic Hierarchy Process and Fuzzy Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution

Green manufacturing is a mode to realize environmental friendliness by considering the environmental impact and energy consumption in manufacturing process.In order to make an environmental friendly assessment for manufacturing process,a multi-criteria decision making( MCDM) model combined with fuzzy analytic hierarchy process( FAHP) and fuzzy technique for order preference by similarity to ideal solution( FTOPSIS) is proposed in this work.The environmental and resource criteria and manufacturing process objects are identified as the first step.Then,the weights of the criteria are calculated by FAHP.Finally,based on experts' evaluation using fuzzy words,the manufacturing process objects are ranked by FTOPSIS.The proposed methodology is applied to a gear shaft manufacturing.The sensitivity analysis and comparisons are implemented to prove its robustness and effectiveness for the ecofriendly assessment for process objects.

Research on Crucial Manufacturing Process of Rigid-Flex PCB

The main characteristics, applications, the emphases of manufacturing process are introduced, and the research of new product of rigid-flex Printed Circuit Board （PCB） is also described. In particular, the plasma desmear process, which is the crucial problems of manufacturing process, is discussed in detail. Samsung 4-layer rigid-flex PCB has been developed successfully, and the qualification rate reaches to 89.4%.