Abstract The design of progressive dies is a very knowledge-intensive, complex, and time-consuming process. This paper describes a computer-aided structural design system for pro-gressive dies with drawing, bending, and punching operations. Taking advantage of a pre-built design knowledge and data-base, this system is able to output designs of the main and standard parts of a progressive die upon users inputting a minimum set of design information. Our system is implemented on top of CATIA V5 software and uses its built-in modules, including Part Design, Assembly Design, and Knowledge Advisor. Our system also consists of an inference engine and a user interface. The experimental results show that our system successfully reduced the design time from about seven working days to within 2 h for the structural design of the main and standard parts of a progressive die of an upper shell for a mobile phone, which can dramatically save on design time and cost and also provide excellent design quality.48315

Keywords Progressive dies . Automated structural design system . Detail design . Assembly design . Knowledge base

1 Introduction

Stamping parts are widely used in products of high complex-ity and precision, such as vehicles, computer, communication, and consumer electronic-related products, because of their competitive performance and productivity. The stamping

B.-T. Lin (*) : K.-M. Huang : K.-Y. Su : C.-Y. Hsu Department of Mechanical and Automation Engineering, National Kaohsiung First University of Science and Technology, Kaohsiung 824 Taiwan, Republic of China

e-mail: bt_lin@ccms.nkfust.edu.tw

K.-M. Huang

Metal Industries Research and Development Center,

Kaohsiung 824 Taiwan, Republic of China

 process has been identified as one of the most important manufacturing processes. However, designing press dies is one of the critical parts of the entire development process. Besides the highly complex die structures, interferences among various design parameters make the design task ex-tremely difficult and time-consuming. It is generally believed that designing dies is an art rather than a science.

Recently, computer technology and 3D computer-aided design (CAD) software have been developing rapidly, and the 3D CAD software has been widely used in designing stamping dies. A solid model offers users an intuitive and concrete view of the die design, which fundamentally re-duces the design time. Most 3D CAD software only offers a simple geometrical modeling function. However, they fail to provide users with sufficient design knowledge, which is of great help in most design tasks.

Therefore, the design of automatic and intelligent sys-tems has been an active research topic around the world. Regarding the construction of a dedicated system, Sharma and Gao [1] introduced integrated design and manufacturing planning systems to support conceptual redesign and reprovisioning activities. Nahm and Ishikawa [2] utilized the set-based design approach with the parametric modeling technique to handle the uncertainties intrinsic to the early stages of the design. Myung and Han [3] constructed an expert system to design mechanical products based on a configuration design method. Lee et al. [4] developed a parametric computer-aided tool design system for cold forg-ing using Auto-LISP. Kong et al. [5] introduced a Windows-native 3D plastic injection mold design system based on Solid Works to make the modeling process more efficient. Chu et al. [6] developed a computer-aided parametric design system for 3D tire mold production in CATIA using CAA.

In the stamping tool design area, Pilani et al. [7] proposed a neural network method for automatically generating an opti-mal die face design based on die face formability parameters. Based on sheet metal operations, Singh and Sekhon [8]