Method for process planning optimization with energy efficiency consideration

Due to the use of computer numerical control machines, a part can be manufactured in a variety of processing methods. The best one can be selected by using different optimization objectives, including the minimal cost, high production flexibility and energy efficiency, etc. From the point of view of reducing energy consumption, in this paper, a new process planning strategy is proposed with energy efficiency consideration. Machining features are used and attempted to automatically or semi-automatically generate feasible process plans of a part under specific circumstance. A machining feature, embedded with manufacturing information, corresponds to a piece of material volume that needs to be removed from a stock to form the part. To simplify the calculation of energy consumption of a process planning, a machine tool-oriented energy assessment approach is presented wherein the energy consumption of process planning is approximated by the total energy consumed of the machines used for comparison. Furthermore, the energy consumption of a machine is approximately estimated according to its material removal rate (MRR). After that, the best process plan can be determined by trading off between the energy consumption and other technique constraints. Finally, a test example is given to validate the proposed approach.