A.M. Dalavi, P.J. Pawar, T.P. Singh
Abstract
Optimization of hole-making operations in manufacturing industry plays a very vital role. Tool travel scheduling and tool switch scheduling are the two major issues in hole-making operations. Many industrial applications such as moulds, dies, engine block, automotive parts etc. requires machining of large number of holes. To machine a hole to its final size various tools with different diameters are required. This gives rise to large number of possible sequences to complete hole-making operations on the part depending on location of hole and tool sequence to be followed. Hence it is necessary to find the optimal sequence of operations and associated cutting speeds which decreases the whole processing cost of hole-making operations. In this work, therefore an attempt is made to decrease whole processing cost of hole-making operations by developing an effective methodology to determine the best operation sequence. The optimization is carried out using recently developed optimization algorithm known as shuffled frog leaping algorithm with modification (Eusuff et al. (2006)) & (Elbeltagi, Tarek, and Donal (2007)). An application example of injection mold is considered in this work to demonstrate the proposed approach. The results obtained are compared with those obtained using Tabu-search method. It is observed that the results obtained using shuffled frog leaping algorithm with modification are slightly superior to those obtained using Tabu-search method for the application example presented in this work.
Keywords- Hole-making operations; Shuffled frog leaping algorithm with modification; Injection mould.