Construction and optimization of the hottest sheet

The wide application of 3D technology in modern enterprises not only provides a platform for the design and development of sheet metal products, but also provides some physical data, such as consumables, material utilization and molding analysis, which provides basic data for rapid quotation and production. The functions of three-dimensional software are expanding, improving and various. Sheet metal enterprises are often at a loss in software selection, and they can't find suitable solutions to the problems they often encounter

based on years of implementation experience and some customer feedback, the author summarizes the following typical problems:

select the appropriate deployment software to improve the efficiency of sheet metal design

material quota management and man hour quota management

the sheet metal design and production system is not unified enough, and the sub functions are separated from each other

II. Solution

1 Select the appropriate deployment software to improve the efficiency of sheet metal design

there are many sheet metal structure design software on the market, such as topsolid, Solidworks, pro/engineer, SolidEdge, UG, inventor, MDT and AutoCAD. These software can well meet the requirements of enterprises for sheet metal product design, but pure part modeling is not enough for sheet metal design. It also involves the unfolding of parts, especially the unfolding of complex parts, which is one of the most important links in the process of sheet metal product design and development

(1) problem description

designers must consider whether the structural design can be carried out in the design process of sheet metal structure. Sheet metal structure is becoming more and more complex, and the factors that need to be considered in this regard also increase. If it is found that the sheet metal cannot be unfolded after the design of the sheet metal structure is completed, or the proper features of the parts are compressed or deleted during the unfolding, the designers have to make changes according to the error prompts on the feature tree. What is more serious is that sometimes it is necessary to re model, which will seriously affect the design efficiency

(2) problem solving

using the autopol (professional sheet metal unfolding software) series products of the Swedish FCC company to unfold sheet metal structural parts can well solve this kind of problem. Designers can design parts in the environment of autopol, interactively set up accurate elongation measurement meters with Solidworks, inventor, AutoCAD and MDT, and even directly extract or export models from the software to other software. More conveniently, the system provides step, sat and IGS file interfaces for other 3D design software (such as pro/engineer, UG and SolidEdge). Designers only need to consider whether the product structure is reasonable in the design process, without considering other issues, and can use 70% - 80% of the saved time to improve the quality of product design

2. Material quota management and man hour quota management

many sheet metal enterprises have implemented PDM and ERP systems, which basically solve the management problem of product design workflow, make it safer, faster and more efficient, and also ensure the integrity and unity of product data. However, the application of ERP and PDM software in sheet metal enterprises 1. The friction resistance of pointer bearings, pendulum bearings and force measuring transmission parts is too large: mainly adjusting and cleaning bearings and force measuring transmission parts In the process of eliminating abnormal friction resistance, there will be some fault processes and redundant processes, which hinder the potential of ERP and PDM software

(1) problem description

General ERP and PDM software can generally be carried out downward according to the order, design, process, production and manufacturing processes, while the process of sheet metal enterprises includes BOM mapping and variation, From ordering bill of material (obom) classified by customers to bbom (purchasing BOM) and MBOM (manufacturing BOM) classified by materials, as well as problems such as material clustering and classification, if carried out directly according to the general ERP and PDM software process, it is bound to cause process redundancy and material waste. In addition, the traditional enterprise calculates the working hour quota according to the empirical formula, which is subjective and arbitrary, and often has a great deviation, which is easy to cause some unfair phenomena

(2) problem solving

bom variation starts from obom, and generates EBOM (engineering BOM, i.e. design BOM) and pbom (planning BOM, i.e. process BOM) through nesting software autonest, pronest and sigmanest. In different eboms, materials with the same material specifications and other characteristics are classified and consolidated, and then purchased according to the inventory margin rules to output bbom. Pbom forms a production plan after scheduling and mapping it into MBOM. In this way, the process is optimized and time and materials are saved. ERP and PDM provide enterprises with a complete data and information platform. By processing and mining these data and information, relatively accurate man hour quotas can be obtained

the key part of the man hour quota is the determination of the processing time. For sheet metal enterprises dominated by numerical control equipment, text data mining can be carried out on the G code to calculate the processing time, plus the corresponding preparation time, auxiliary time, etc., and a relatively accurate and reasonable man hour quota can be obtained

3. The sheet metal design and production system is not unified, and the sub functions are separated from each other.

there are many general design software in the market, which are applicable to a wide range of industries and can meet the design and manufacturing requirements of most enterprise products. Through the characteristics of internal data association of these platforms, the data generated in the process of product design and processing code generation are associated together, which improves the production efficiency

however, the sheet metal industry has its special process flow, as shown in Figure 1

Figure 1 process flow

(1) problem description

it can be seen from the process flow in Figure 1 that there are many subsequent processes of sheet metal product design, and many existing software can only meet one or two of them. For example, CATIA, pro/engineer, UG, SolidWorks and SolidEdge can complete the modeling of complex sheet metal parts, autopol can complete the deployment, autonest can complete the layout, output the cutting drawing and the layout drawing required by punching or cutting, jetcam, PROCAM and lantek can complete the layout, punching and cutting processing, E2I can complete the cost calculation of sheet metal products, etc. enterprises can choose according to their own conditions. These subsystems are independent of each other, the product data is not related, and cannot be modified or operated across platforms. The general data generated by each platform has lost the characteristic information during modeling, and the function of the software has not been brought into full play, wasting resources and capital investment, and reducing the design and production efficiency

(2) problem solving

the best way to solve the above contradiction is to use a system to realize the whole process flow, such as using radan and topsolid. Radan is a total solution for the sheet metal industry, including all the functions required by the sheet metal process, Even sheet metal "Lubrizol currently has the output of the quotation list of laboratory and factory products in Songjiang, Shanghai. Topsolid is a high-end cad/cam/cae/pdm software with comprehensive functions, which can realize the integrated design and production of product structure, plastic mold, hardware mold, sheet metal and furniture. It is suitable for enterprises with complex products, many kinds and short production cycle.

III. conclusion

this paper recommends the structure of sheet metal design and processing system Built common software, using special software to solve some specific problems of sheet metal, and also introduces the integrated software of integrated sheet metal design and production. At the same time, according to the author's implementation experience and some customer feedback information, three typical common problems are discussed and specific solutions are proposed, hoping to bring help to the majority of sheet metal enterprises

originally published in cad/cam and manufacturing informatization (end)