An Approximate Approach for the Verification of Process Plans with an Application to Reconfigurable Pallets

The manufacturing sector has to be able to manage high-variety and low-volumes per product, causing the adoption of a dedicated production system/cell to be unfeasible. In this context, reconfigurable pallets and flexible fixtures are enablers to manage product variety and volume variability. Namely, as a pallet is reconfigured, the associated part program needs to be verified to check for possible collisions between the tools and the new machining environment. An approach is proposed to verify the machinability of a pallet configuration given an existing part program. The approach grounds on an approximated collision check method exploiting a 3D representation of the machining environment (fixtures and parts). The approach is validated through an application to a realistic use case and the comparison with the results of a traditional collision check approach.