Manufacturing of custom-made parts for assembly of large aircraft components

The manufacturing of custom-made parts requires the development of strategies integrating design and manufacturing. The need for custom-made parts is increasing constantly due to its application in different industrial sectors: medical prosthesis, car parts, aircraft parts, etc. Under such context, this paper describes a part of the MISTRAL (Methods of InverSe engineering To develop RApid prototyping tooLs) project. Taking a file with clouds of points as main input, the aim was to generate CAD models and machining process plans for custom-made parts. The parts are different for every aircraft produced, since they have to fit in with large components, whose real geometry is subject to variable deformation states in the assembly process. This paper presents a prototype development carried out mainly in CATIA v5. The developed solution was tested with a typical family of parts. (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.