A volume decomposition model to determine machining features for prismatic parts

Abstract

Selection and development of machining features are the core activity in process planning. Usually the machining features development is done by experts according to elementary volumes. Performing this process by experts develops a limited machining features and the optimum solution may be missed. In this study a new method is developed to generate machining features and analyzes them to extract feasible features. The feasible solution is based on technical limitation of parts without any expert's judgments. Also it uses a set covering optimization technique to extract optimum one. Finally, the numerical results are presented and performance of the proposed method is tested by some candidate parts. © 2009 Asian Network for Scientific Information.