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Views: 50 Author: Site Editor Publish Time: 2024-07-26 Origin: Site
Designing products is a complex task that requires consideration of multiple factors, such as product structure, material selection, final applications, and competitor products. Another vital element is the manufacturing process requirements for part design. You may wonder why the manufacturing process imposes limitations on design and why it cannot be switched to other processes. However, to transform your design into a tangible part efficiently and cost-effectively, the manufacturing process must be considered during the design phase.
This article examines the design requirements for CNC machining processes and provides five tips to produce parts cost-effectively, efficiently, and with high quality, while ensuring the product's functionality, appearance, and reliability.
The stricter the tolerance of a part, the more expensive it becomes. This holds true for machined parts as well. The chart below illustrates that as the precision requirements for a part increase, more precise manufacturing processes are needed, resulting in decreased production efficiency and higher production costs.
Thus, it's advisable to avoid tight tolerances. Parts with looser tolerances are easier and more cost-effective to machine. To adjust to looser tolerances, you can approach it from two angles.
a. Product geometry: There are several strategies to avoid tight tolerances in parts, such as designing adequate gaps, simplifying assembly relationships, incorporating positioning features, and using points or lines to align with surfaces rather than aligning surfaces with each other.
b. Part surface: Surfaces that require less precision and quality should not be designed to have high precision and roughness. Additionally, surfaces that do not need machining should not be designed as machined surfaces.
By appropriately dividing and combining products, the structures of products and parts are simplified, making the entire product easier to machine, which improves processing quality and reduces production costs.
When designing machined parts, it's important to look beyond individual components and consider the overall product perspective, taking into account the feasibility, production efficiency, and machining costs of each part. Simplifying the structure of products and parts through reasonable splitting and combining results in products that are easier to machine with high quality and lower costs.
In the original design, complex geometries are time-consuming to machine, while in the optimized design, simpler structures reduce processing costs and increase production efficiency.
It is undoubtedly more challenging to machine inner surfaces compared to outer surfaces. Therefore, parts should be designed in a way that minimizes machining difficulty.
When creating drawings for machined parts, the dimensions should be marked in a way that makes them easy to measure.
Indeed, CNC machining is relatively expensive and time-consuming, and it cannot handle extremely complex geometries. In many industries, CNC machining is being replaced by other manufacturing methods such as injection molding, stamping, and die casting. Therefore, a product designer should consider whether other manufacturing processes can be used instead of CNC machining.
