Validating and verifying fixture kinematics for virtual manufacturing

Abstract

This paper presents a method to validate and verify the kinematics of fixtures for virtual manufacturing. The proposed method exploits the strengths of loop detection and simplified fixture kinematics. The solution to the kinematics problem is acquired by sequentially processing the loops in a structure, starting from the main loop and continuing for the remaining loops. The proposed method incorporates the Newton–Raphson method to solve the inverse kinematics of a closed loop. The proposed method is an alternative and systematic way to simulate fixture kinematics that is simple yet general enough for various fixture kinematics types. The proposed method was implemented in a software module to validate and verify fixture kinematics for a virtual manufacturing environment.

Keywords:

• fixture
• kinematics
• Newton–Raphson (NR)
• virtual manufacturing (VM)