Automatic Process Design System for Cold Forging of Fasteners with Various Head Geometries

다양한 머리 형상을 갖는 체결구의 냉간 단조 자동 공정 설계 시스템

In order to improve the productivity of cold forging at low production cost, an integrated system's approach is necessary in handling the material preparation and the optimum process design, considering the forming machines, tooling, and operation including quality control. As the first step toward this approach, an expert system for multi-stage cold forging process design for fasteners with various head geometries is developed using Prolog language on IBM 486 PC. For effective representation of the complex part geometries, the system uses the multiple element input, and the forward inference scheme in determination of the initial billet size and intermediate forging steps. In order to determine intermediate steps, the basic empirical rules for extrusion, heading, and trimming were applied. The required forming loads and global strain distributions at each forging step were calculated and displayed on the PC monitor. The designed process sequence drawing can be obtained by AutoCAD. The developed system will be useful in reducing trial and error of design engineers in determining the diameter and height of the initial cylindrical billet from the final product geometry and the intermediate necessary sequences.