Jigs and ®xtures are one of the important aspects of manufacturing. Parts may have different sets of ®xturing requirements and call for different design strategies. Although there are numerous possibilities for ®xture designs, a few basic con®gurations are clearly identi®able. Computer aided design (CAD) has done a little in assisting designers to design jigs and ®xtures, making decisions of the best design selection, and providing designers with suggestions. The goal of this paper is to develop and document the design parameters and speci®cations utilized in jigs and ®xtures design using universal modular jigs and ®xtures design system (UMJFS). This is the ®rst step to develop a knowledge-based Jigs and Fixture design and selection system. This application has the advantages of making the ®xture design information completely modular and transparent, providing better match to the working conditions, reducing lead-time, and generally providing a signi®cant enhancement of ®xture productivity and economy. UMJFS has different standard and modular elements. This makes jigs and ®xtures elements interchangeable and reusable. Designing a UMJFS then becomes a task of selecting and assembling the proper elements together.34139
Keywords: Manufacturing systems, jigs and ®xtures, universal modular jigs and ®xtures, case-based reasoning, knowledge-based systems
1. Introduction
Jigs and ®xtures design, one of the big mechanical design categories in machinery manufacturing, has been developing since the mechanical industry was born. They evolved from those very limited functions such as simple clamps, to high precision ®xtures used today (Miller, 1994). Despite its long history of development, jigs and ®xtures design has been highly skill-dependent using non-universal, non-modular jigs and ®xtures (Miller, 1994; Liu, 1994; Pham et al., 1989; Yashima and Kimura 1994; Willy et al., 1995; Chou et al., 1994; Chou, 1994; Zhang et al., 1994; Ohashi, 1994; Roy and Sun, 1994; King, 1994; Mason, 1995; Rong et al., 1994; Hanada et. al.论文网
1994; Hockenberger et al., 1995; Hargrove, 1994; Hallum, 1995; Abou-Hanna et al., 1993; Ceglarek and Shi, 1994; Abou-Hanna et al., 1993; DeMeter, 1994; Sayeed and DeMeter, 1994; Amirouche, 1993; Arora, 1989; Balachandran, 1993; Bardasz, 1991; Colvin and Stanley, 1948; Hoffman, 1962; Kalay, 1987; Kempster, 1969; Pham, 1991; Sriram and Adey, 1986; Yetal, 1983; Yoshikawa and Gossard, 1989). A lot of efforts have been made trying to keep track of the design processes (Arora, 1989; Balachandran, 1993; Kalay, 1987). Companies set up their own standards and conventions to increase designer's work ef®ciency, in other words, to eliminate the redundant design work by just picking up some standard components. Company standards are regarded as
0956-5515 # 2000 Kluwer Academic Publishers
highly specialized standards. In most cases, they will not work for another company in the same ®eld. A documentation system is very important for the company's management to keep track of the design. Every design case is stored into a library with an assigned product name, a serial number, which could be easily located in a particular shelf. Jigs and ®xtures design is a highly specialized engineering ®eld. The design requires a broad range of knowledge from operating machine tools to mechanical assembly lines. The detailed discussion for the topic can be found in Colvin and Stanley (1948) and Hoffman (1962). With the advent of computer technology, computer aided design has been prevalent in mechanical engineering industry. When it comes to jigs and ®xtures design, CAD has done a little (Yashima and Kimura, 1994; Willy et al., 1995; Chou et al., 1994; Amirouche, 1993; Sriram and Adey, 1986; Yosikawa and Gossard, 1989) in assisting designers to do design analysis, make decisions of the best design selection, and provide designers with suggestions. A limitation of the classical theory is that they represent design of conventional jigs and ®xtures; no information can be found in the ®eld of jigs and ®xtures design using UMJFS. The UMJFS (Yetal, 1983) is a relatively new technology which appeared in the 1960s. After 30 years of their application and testing in industry, the technology has been proven to be easy-to-use, cost-effective, and less time-consuming in production. This paper provides quite detailed information for UMJFS elements, jigs and ®xtures design via UMJFS, and a brief review of principles of UMJFS. The core of UMJFS is based on the theory that current problem solving can bene®t from solutions of past similar problems. This will determine and evaluate optimal ®xture con®gurations from the description of the workpiece and the assembly task (Ohasi, 1994). So, rather than dealing with unpredictable ®xture construction elements generated by inpidual designers, we now have the set of the standard elements. This makes jigs and ®xtures elements interchangeable and reusable, reducing the lead-time and the total production cost. Because the ®xture elements have their own naming convention, the selection of elements becomes very easy and precise. The goal of this paper is to develop and organize the design parameters and speci®cations utilized in jigs and ®xtures design. 组合夹具系统的设计英文文献和中文翻译:http://www.751com.cn/fanyi/lunwen_31562.html