To improve machining fixture design: a case based reasoning paradigm

Abstract

Fixture design is a complex and an experience based process without any throughout numerical theory behind. Proper fixture design could improve the quality of products and reduce the cost as well as required time of manufacturing; consequently the modern manufacturing environment requires suitable design systems to achieve appropriate fixtures. In this paper to obtain an acceptable machining fixture design, a case-based reasoning method with developed retrieval system is proposed. In order toincrease the effectiveness of the case based reasoning (CBR) retrieval system some formulae are derived which are able to measure similarity between symbolic attributes.This method references previous design cases to help designers for a new case in an easy manner.By using this method the designer can solve the faced fixture problem by finding the most similar work piece to the query case accurately and quickly by means of a hybrid retrieval system. A case study to validate the methodis performed using this method to present the applicability of this method. According to case studies result, this method can work properly in fixture design for prismatic parts. Comparing to the current CBR methods in fixture design, the proposed method in this research is faster and easier regarding to reduce reliance on the designer experience and being done in one step.