Title: Assembly process simulation of toleranced products

Authors: GangWei Cui, YingXue Yao, Yu Wang

Addresses: Department of Manufacturing and Automation, School of Mechatronics Engineering, Harbin Institute of Technology, Manufacturing Building 515, No. 92 West Da-Zhi Street, Nangang District, Harbin, Heilongjiang, 150001, P.R. China. ' School of Mechatronics Engineering, Harbin Institute of Technology, Campus box 422, No. 92 West Da-Zhi Street, Nangang District, Harbin, Heilongjiang, 150001, P.R. China. ' School of Mechatronics Engineering, Harbin Institute of Technology, Machine Building 3051, No. 92 West Da-Zhi Street, Nangang District, Harbin, Heilongjiang, 150001, P.R. China

Abstract: Virtual assembly based on virtual reality provides a low-cost and rapid prototyping method for products| assembly, and tolerances have become a key technique of information integration in CAD/CAM. Integrating tolerances into virtual assembly is therefore a completely new approach. Many representations of assembly modelling have focused on capturing the mating constraints between components. Using the related theories, the expression of the constraints for assembly components and the method of extracting the constraints and mate feature matrix from the CAD software of Pro/Engineer are proposed, and finally, they are used to control and simulate the assembly process. A toleranced product modelling system based on the virtual reality is developed, and the use of tolerances is discussed by an example. In our research, we found that virtual assembly becomes more available by integrating tolerances into it.

Keywords: toleranced products; simulation; virtual assembly; assembly process; mating features matrix; product modelling; Pro/Toolkit; virtual reality; rapid prototyping; product assembly; tolerances; information integration.

DOI: 10.1504/IJIMS.2010.033936

International Journal of Internet Manufacturing and Services, 2010 Vol.2 No.3/4, pp.248 - 264

Published online: 05 Jul 2010 *

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