Abstract
Abstract
Sheet metal parts have been widely used in industry and much information for parts has been accumulated in a database. In planning the manufacturing process of a sheet metal part, if the process plan of a similar part can be retrieved from the database, the process planning would be faster and more consistent. In this paper, an effective method of searching the sheet metal parts based on bending process similarity is proposed. This method consists of two stages. In the first stage, flat pattern drawings of the parts with the same set-up numbers are classified into several topological structures. In the second stage, the parts that possess a similar bending process to the target part are selected. The bending process similarity is defined by the grasping position of a robot gripper. The number of reposition and grasping positions are decided by taking the geometric element of the flat pattern into consideration. The effectiveness of this method is described and illustrative examples are shown.