• Korean Journal of Computational Design and Engineering
• /
• v.13 no.3
• /
• pp.235-242
• /
• 2008

This paper proposes a method for improving the process plan quality by use of dimensional tolerances. Dimensioning and tolerancing plays a key role in manufacturing process plan because the final part must ensure conformance with the dimensions and tolerances in its drawing. As a first step for the improvement of process plan quality, two resultant tolerances in design and process plan should be compared each other, and so a tolerance chart is used for acquisition and comparison of the two tolerances. In addition to two kinds of design and manufacturing tolerances, operational sequences or paths for the resultant dimension and tolerance are additionally recognized for measuring the quality of process plan quantitatively. Rooted tree is applied to find the related paths for the manufacturing resultant tolerances. A quality coefficient is defined by the components of two tolerances and their relations, the paths related to manufacturing resultant tolerances and the difficulty of an operation. In order to improve the quality of manufacturing process plan, the paths that two kinds of tolerances are the same or different in the rooted tree are recognized respectively and a method for tolerance rearrangement is developed. A procedure for improving the quality is suggested by combining the coefficient and the tolerance rearrangement method. A case study is applied to illustrate the efficiency of improvement method.