Research And Development Of Friction Stir Welding CAPP System

Computer-aided process planning technology, as the link between the design ofproduction and manufacturing, has a very important significance. Friction stir weldingtechnology, which is one of the most popular advanced welding technologies, attractsmore and more attention from the manufacturing industry, but no such CAPP systemshave been developed right now. Based on available welding CAPP systems, this paperdeveloped a Friction-stir-welding CAPP system with the special feature of FSW. Thispaper’s main research contents and achievements are as follow:1. This CAPP system has a friendly man-machine interactive interface with avariety of process design methods, which can suffice friction stir welding process ofgeneral industries.2. This paper has collected a lot of FSW process data and established a completedatabase system, which is not only convenient for the industry to manage process data,but also can share and inherit such information.3. For the stir head’s special significance, which is an important part of FSW, thispaper established a database for stir head, including stir pin and shoulder.4. This FSW-CAPP system can be used for welding CIM system with otherwelding process CAPP systems, which can meet a variety of production needs ofindustry applications.The friction stir welding CAPP system is divided into the following parts, theyare welding process design module, user management module, documentsmanagement module, database and data management modules and other components.Welding process design module is mainly responsible for the preparation of thefriction stir welding process documents, including judgment of whether to adoptfriction stir welding, design of joint, preparations before welding, selection and designof welder and welding equipment, design of welding process parameters.On the basis of such analysis, this paper chooses ORACLE as the databasemanagement system of this CAPP system, considering the characteristics of database.Using Visual C++as the client development tool, this paper developed a functional,user-friendly, safe operating, and good performing FSW-CAPP system in the Windows XP OS. This CAPP system adopted Client/Server mode pattern.This CAPP system established in this paper can not only provide enterprises withconvenient and reliable FSW process design, but can also provide more functionssuch as data query, process documents management and so on. It can improveproduction efficiency and management level, which can increase the company’seconomic benefits and improve their competitiveness in market. Meanwhile, theFSW-CAPP system has a important significance in establishing standardized FSWspecification.