CAM feature model for laser beam welding

Today's situation with increasingly shorter time-to-market limits and growing variant spectra calls for advanced methods in the manufacturing domain. A big potential for gaining faster and better manufacturing results lies in the application of offline programming, especially if processing small lot sizes. Offline programming offers as main advantage a notable reduction of deadlock times of manufacturing systems. Applying this technology there is no time consumptive teach-in on the robots necessary. A technology module based on CAD/CAM technique is described which permits to carry out offline path and process planning including simulation and visualization of the processing task. The technology module is designed as an interactive and flexible tool to support the user in the planning phase. Simulation is utilized to visualize the manufacturing process and to detect conflicting situations like collisions or forbidden welding positions. The welding track with all processing parameters is displayed on a graphical user screen. The user has the possibility to modify the processing parameters interactively. After finishing simulation the CNC code is generated by a post-processor and directly transferred to the machine control.