Investigation On Intelligent Expert System Of CAPP

Computer aided process planning is the link in Computer Integrated Manufacturing Systems which connects CAD and CAM together. It's an available way to improve the middle and small batch production, and it has very important significance in both theory and practice.Expert System technology is developing very fast in recent years. It is a very important branch of artificial intelligence. Expert System has features of opening, transparent and agile, which are the functions needed in the future CAPP systems. Thus the combination of CAPP and Expert System will become certain. The development of Artificial Neural Network provides a solution to many problems in CAPP systems based on Expert System technology.The development history and the future trend of CAPP systems both home and abroad are presented. The application of Expert System technology in CAPP is studied, including fundamental ideas and design methodology. For overcoming the shortcomings of Expert System, the advantages and feasibility of integration of Artificial Neural Network technology and Expert System are also discussed.As a result, an applied program named ESCAPP has been developed which is suitable to shaft part family, running in VB6.0 and Windows environment. The system is consisted of following sub-systems: customer interface, part description, documentation management and process generating. After inputting the necessary part manufacturing information, the process routine and regulations, including operation sketch with dimentions, can be generated automatically, thus increasing design flexibility and efficiency in product process planning.