A methodology for design and reconfiguration of reconfigurable bending press machines (RBPMs)

Abstract

Customer requirements have become very dynamic and unprecedented. A manufacturing paradigm called reconfigurable manufacturing system was initiated to adjust the physical machine entities. The main enabler of a machine structure’s reconfigurability is a modular design approach. The paper explains a function-driven object-oriented methodology for the design and reconfiguration of RBPMs. The complete method aims to optimise initial design of RBPMs, followed by subsequent design of RPBM modules which are stored in a module library so as to enable full-automatic reconfiguration of the RBPMs. The methodology is implemented on a pilot project to design a 145 ton bending capacity RBPM, with a maximum reconfigured length of 5 m and total height of 3 m. In order to deduce the design for the reconfigurable bending press machine, the reconfigurability needs were identified first, followed by the construction of a function tree for the machine. The function tree identifies the primary function for the RBPM, which is to bend sheet metal. The primary function is further decomposed to lower level functions until terminal functions are arrived at. The terminal functions are then used to identify the modules for the machine. The modules implement specific brunches of the machine functions.

Keywords:

• reconfigurable manufacturing system (RMS)
• reconfigurable bending press machine (RBPM)
• sheet metal bending
• function tree
• module tree

Acknowledgements

The authors are very grateful to the following; Tshwane University of Technology (TUT) for providing relentless support during the research, National Research Foundation (NRF), South Africa, for funding the research work, and Technology Innovation Agency (TIA), South Africa. Any opinion, findings, recommendations and conclusion expressed in this material is that of the authors and TUT, NRF and TIA do not accept any liability whatsoever in this regard.