Freeform Object Design and Simultaneous Manufacturing

Editor(s)

Pan, Zhigeng and Shi, Jiaoying

Abstract

Today's product design, especially the consuming product design, focuses more and more on individuation, originality, and the time to market. One way to meet these challenges is using the interactive and creationary product design methods and rapid prototyping/rapid tooling. This paper presents a novel Freeform Object Design and Simultaneous Manufacturing (FODSM) method that combines the natural interaction feature in the design phase and simultaneous manufacturing feature in the prototyping phase. The natural interactive three-dimensional design environment is achieved by adopting virtual reality technology. The geometry of the designed object is defined through the process of "virtual sculpting" during which the designer can touch and visualize the designed object and can hear the virtual manufacturing environment noise. During the designing process, the computer records the sculpting trajectories and automatically translates them into NC codes so as to simultaneously machine the designed part. The paper introduced the principle, implementation process, and key techniques of the new method, and compared it with other popular rapid prototyping methods.

Meeting Name

Third International Conference on Virtual Reality and its Applications in Industry

Department(s)

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering

Keywords and Phrases

Manufacturing; Product Engineering; Rapid Manufacturing; Virtual Reality; Prototyping; Computing Systems

Document Type

Article - Conference proceedings

Document Version

Citation

File Type

text

Language(s)

English

Rights

© 2002 SPIE -- The International Society for Optical Engineering, All rights reserved.

Publication Date

01 Jan 2002

Link to Full Text

Share

 
COinS