Research On An Automatic Approach To Clamp Planning For Dowel-pin Modular Fixture System

A clamping design approach for automated fixture design based on dowel-pin system is presented in this paper, which accepts a polygonal and columniform description of the part silhouette. The main work in this study is to find the optimal clamping plan according to the part described with solid model, the machining region and the locating design. The representation and abstract method of the feasible clamping face of a part from the solid model are proposed. The classification of feasible clamping position of workpiece is established by making use of the reducing method of the projecting outline of part, the hierarchy model of clamping points is constructed, and so does the method of combination of clamping points. The quality metric of clamping plan are established according to the relationship between the location of clamping point and the actual support region of the main datum plane of part. This algorithm facilitates automation in the context of integrated CAD and CAPP, and can find all admissible fixture design. A prototype system is developed finally with ACIS 7.0 and Visual C++ 6.0, and some samples are used to proved the algorithms involved in this paper.