AUTOMATION OF SHEET METAL COMBINATION DIE DESIGN PROCESS

This paper proposed a novel methodology for designing and manufacturing of sheet metal dies based on features of sheet parts. Also, combination is designed according to die cupping and punching features of sheet metal parts. The proposed approach is an attempt to make seamless integration of computer aided design with computer aided manufacturing. The features used in this study are taken from MusumiTM Catalogue as well as from various small and medium scale sheet metal industries. Work is divided into two phases. In the first phase, the relevant geometrical and topological data is extracted by reading STEP AP 203. In the second phase, a combine adjacency matrix and rule-based system is developed to recognize sheet metal features for die manufacturing. The system showed excellent performance for all types of features contained in the MusumiTM catalog and for different sheet metal industries. The proposed system for automated design of combination dies for sheet metal parts has been tested successfully for various types of industrial deep drawn parts. It reduces the die compoment design time from hours to minutes. selection of die components and drawings generated by the system were found to be reasonable and very similar to those actually used in the sheet metal industries for production of these typical components on combination dies.