Unified Representation of Fixtures: clamping, locating and supporting elements in CNC manufacture

Parag Vichare (1) , Aydin Nassehi (1, 2) , Stephen Newman (3)

1 Mechanical Engineering
2 Department of Mechanical Engineering
3 Mechanical Engineering

A CNC machining operation is the outcome of the application of the integrated capabilities of various resources within the CNC machining centre. Part fixtures, clamping and other location mechanisms are essential subsets of CNC machining resources. Today, various fixturing techniques and attachments available on the market allow manufacturers to enhance their production capability without buying expensive machine tools. This technology rich fixturing domain is detached while representing and exchanging machine tool resource information for making manufacturing decisions. The research work in this paper utilizes the STEP-NC compliant Unified Manufacturing Resource Model (UMRM) for representing fixtures in conjunction with the parent CNC machining centre. Thus UMRM is enhanced in this context to represent various fixtures such as universal vises, chucks, pallets, auxiliary rotary tables among others. The major contribution of this paper is the application of the extension of the UMRM approach for representing fixturing domain, which allows generic modelling of fixtures and loading devices in addition to machine workpiece and process modelling. This would enable the stage of automated process planning and manufacturing. The universal approach in representing resource information allows the data to be utilised for making a wide variety of manufacturing decisions.

Mots clés: Physical Sciences

Parag Vichare, Aydin Nassehi, Stephen Newman. Unified Representation of Fixtures: clamping, locating and supporting elements in CNC manufacture. International Journal of Production Research, 2010, pp.1. ⟨10.1080/00207543.2010.518992⟩. ⟨hal-00638144⟩