Optimizing Cutting Planes for Advanced Joining and Additive Manufacturing

Abstract

While additive manufacturing allows more complex shapes than conventional manufacturing processes, there is a clear benefit in leveraging both new and old processes in the definition of new parts. For example, one could create complex part shapes where the main “body” is defined by extrusion and machining, while small protruding features are defined by additive manufacturing. This paper looks at how optimization and geometric reasoning can be combined to identify optimal separation planes within a complex three-dimensional shapes. These separations indicate the joining processes in reverse. The optimization method presents possible manufacturing alternatives to an engineering designer where optimality is defined as a minimization of cost. The process identifies the cutting planes as well as the combination of processes required to join the individual parts together. The paper presents several examples of complex shapes and describes how the optimization finds the optimal results.

A decomposition method for efficient manufacturing of complex parts

“…Such features, as well as less obvious options, can be found by selecting all the faces with adjacent concave edges. Using concave edges performs well in most cases, but Relevant Flats [11] is a more general approach. In this method, a cutting plane is added to every flat that will cut through the solid when that face is extended indefinitely.…”

“…3, this approach resulted in nineteen unique cutting planes. Relevant Flats was chosen because it is the fastest of the five cutting plane identification methods presented in [11], however, for more complex parts Area Decomposition [11] and user feedback may be preferable.…”