Abstract:
Though Computer Aided Process Planning (CAPP) is the key to mlegrate design and
manufacturing systems, CAPP ha, not kept pace with (he development of CW and CAM
syslel11~_Still a major part orihe proces,> plans l~ created manually due (0 the lock of a standard
una generali/ed sy,lem to lrwl',fonTI de8ign infornlalion completely into manufacturing
inii)rmalion. In this work. geol1letri~ mi'Jl111alion of a rolallOll~1 part 1, translated into
manuJac!uring iniormalLon llmlligh a Data Imerch,mge FOTTllal(DXF). A feature recognition
algorithm is used to recognize dirfcrcnt fcalures 0(- the par! fr0111lIS DXF file, Then each
feature of the part is rccognircd using the data extracted from DXF file, O]Jlirnlz~tion of
parameters is the vital stage of process planning since the economy of machmmg operation
plays thc most important role in incrt'a~ing productivity and compelitl\'eness. In this work,
process planning parameters for machining rotational components are also optlmi7,ed by a
'Genetic Algorithm' in Matlah environment. Here machining time is considered as the
obj ecti\'e function and constraints arc machine capacity, limits 0 ('i"eedrate. depth of cut, culling
speed etc. Machining timc is minimized throllgh a sent'S or gt'neTations while some genetic
operators arc applied at each generation. The resuH of the work amply demonstnlles the quick
eonvergi ng ahi1ity oi"genetic algorithm.
