Abstract
Due to the higher structure efficiency and lightweight characteristic, thin-walled parts are widely used in the modern manufacturing industry. However, from another point of view, these parts are complex in structure, weak stiffness and high precision demand. During the machining process, because of the material properties and structural characteristics, the action of elastic deformation in machining is heavily affected by the accuracy of thin-walled parts. Recently, novel near-net-shape machining methods which can be applicable to small-lot production such as thin-walled casting, additive manufacturing, and so on becomes common technology.
Finish machining of these thin-walled and complex shape workpiece is an important target of machining. In the small lot production, most of fixturing process is executed as manual operations, which generate large process variations. These variations lead to deteriorate machining accuracy. Especially, the wrong operation for the fixture clamping sequence generates different workpiece deformation. The objective of this research is to estimate actual workpiece deformation by utilizing locally measured strains and fixturing simulation in order to detect unallowable workpiece deformation caused by the wrong clamping sequence.
In this research, workpiece deformations for different clamping sequences are evaluated based on the engineering experiments. Verifications of estimated workpiece deformations are carried out. Through this research, we can effectively estimate the workholding situation of the thin-walled parts during the machining process.
