ASSEMBLY SIMULATION FOR TOLERANCED PARTS: AN ADAPTED PATH PLANNING APPROACH

One crucial task of product development is the definition of tolerances to assure assemblability and the fulfillment of functional and aesthetic requirements. It is extremely difficult to specify the necessary tolerance types and values of products that consist of several manufactured, imperfect components. The defined tolerances interact and can add up their negative effects. This results in a final product that differs from the original geometry and may lead to problems when assembling. The contribution of this paper is a simulation for the assembly of toleranced parts, based on algorithms for automatic path planning. Goal of the simulation is to check whether the defined tolerances will lead to problems. Therefore, non-nominal part variants are virtually generated and assembled. Contrary to common methods, the used modeling allows the representation of measure, form and position errors. After introducing basic path planning, several modifications are presented that enable statistic analysis and visualization of the assembly process. With the presented approach, an intuitive examination of toleranced assemblies is made possible in an early stage of the design process.