Extraction of features for combined additive manufacturing and machining processes in a remanufacturing context

Abstract

The emergence of additive manufacturing (AM) techniques in the last 30 years allows to build complex part by adding material in a layer-based fashion or spraying the material directly into the part or a substrate. Taking into account performance of these techniques in a ‘new remanufacturing strategy’ can open new ways to transform an end-of-life (EoL) part into a new part intended for another product. The strategy might allow a considerable material proportion of existing parts to be reused directly for producing new parts without passing through the recycling stage. In this work, the strategy enable the transformation of existing parts into desired parts is first presented. The strategy uses an adequate sequence of additive and subtractive operations, as well as inspection operations to achieve the geometry and quality of final parts. This sequence will be designed from a set of AM features and machining features, which are extracted from available technical information and the CAD models of existing part, and final part. The core of the paper focuses on the feature extraction approach. The approach development is based on the knowledge of AM processes and machining process, as well as the specifications of final part.