Virtual manufacturing: prediction of work piece geometric quality by considering machine and set-up accuracy

In the context of concurrent engineering, the design of the parts, the production planning and the manufacturing facility must be considered simultaneously. This enables the design and development cycle to be reduced with manufacturing constraints being taken into account as early as possible. Thus the design phase takes into account the manufacturing constraints but these constraints must not restrict the design’s creativity. Moreover in order to provide support to select the most suitable system for a specific process, Virtual Manufacturing is supplemented with developments of numerical computations. In this context, the authors want to predict the work piece geometric more accurately quality by considering the machine limitations through the use of process simulation with reference to a particularly case study based on a 3 axis milling machine. The scope of this study focuses on these geometric defects: machine geometric errors and positioning errors, due to fixture system.