A reliable process planning approach based on fuzzy comprehensive evaluation method incorporating historical machining data

Abstract

The quality of process planning could directly affect product quality, machining efficiency and cost. In small batch production such as machining aircraft structural parts, human experience is dominant in the process planning of those parts with great variability. Inferior planning of the machining process directly leads to low efficiency and quality, which has serious impact on the lead time of aircraft structural parts. To address these problems, different from the existing process knowledge reuse method by estimating the geometric similarity, a more reliable process planning method based on fuzzy comprehensive evaluation via historical machining data is proposed in this article. As long as machining resources are determined, a feature-based historical machining data model can be built, and the similarities between new machining features and the features in the database are estimated accordingly. Machining strategy, which contains tool path strategy and machining parameters, can then be identified according to the evaluation results of the similar features based on entropy weight method. A prototype system is developed and successfully applied to the typical aircraft structural parts.