Computer Aided Manufacturing
Computer aided manufacturing concerns the use of algorithms
for planning and controlling fabrication processes.
These algorithms are also important to computer aided
design, since it is important to be able to test manufacturability
as part of the design process. Specific areas of computer aided manufacturing listed as separate topics here include
grasping and fixturing,
metrology,
robot motion planning,
and textile layout.
- Chee
Yap's report from the NSF Workshop on Manufacturing and
Computational Geometry, held April 1994 at NYU.
- Die-open
direction.
Dave Wuerger discusses algorithms for a geometric problem in "the
design of dies for near-net-shape manufacturing processes".
See also follow-on work by Georg Kurth.
-
Efficient geometric algorithms for workpiece orientation in 4- and
5-axis NC-machining, Prosenjit Gupta, Ravi Janardan, Jayanth
Majhi, and Tony Woo, 5th MSI Worksh. Comp. Geom.
- Fixturing and
setup planning. From a paper on automated manufacturability
analysis at U. Maryland, the contents page of which seems to be missing.
- Ken
Goldberg describes a problem of computing (probabilities of)
all stable placements of a polyhedron, which he used
in modeling part feeder systems.
-
Kinematics-driven Geometric Modeling: A Framework for Simultaneous
Sculptured Surface Design and CNC Tool Path Generation,
Q. Jeffrey Ge, 5th MSI Worksh. Comp. Geom.,
makes a case for tighter coupling between CAD and CAM.
- Optimizing part quality with orientation,
D. Thompson and R. Crawford, U. Texas. Defines measures that relate
quality to the orientation of a part and describes algorithms for
finding optimal orientations.
- Pocket machining. Martin Held has two papers available on planning
problems for this method of manufacture:
"Pocket
Machining Based on Contour-Parallel Tool Paths Generated
by Means of Proximity Maps" and
"Optimization
Problems Related to Zigzag Pocket Machining".
- An geometry problem arising in a special case
of manufacturing
concerns forming parts out of folded
sheet metal -- one must unfold the part
to a flat surface that does not overlap itself. This can always
be done for convex polyhedra if one can cut faces, but it is open
whether one need only use cuts along edges.
Touch-3d is commercial software for making unfolded models for rapid prototyping; according to MacUser
(Jul '97 p.52), "components often overlap" requiring extensive user
interaction, so they need better unfolding algorithms!
I've collected several more unfolding
references in my junkyard.
- Solid
freeform fabrication.
A group at U. Texas describes geometric problems arising in planning
for laser sintering and laser deposition processes.
- Tesarna Typesetter Program
uses medial axes to produce carved lettering by a computer controlled router.
Part of
Geometry in Action,
a collection of applications of computational geometry.
David Eppstein,
Theory Group,
ICS,
UC Irvine.
Semi-automatically
filtered
from a common source file.
