CLAMPIT

INTELLIGENT WELDING CLAMP DESIGN SOFTWARE USING COMPUTER-AIDED OPTIMIZATION FOR SMES TO ACHIEVE HIGH PRECISION ASSEMBLY

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 Obiettivo del progetto (Objective)

'Welding workshops operated by SME companies are a basic unit of industrial manufacturing. Economic pressures are forcing these firms to find solutions for wasteful and time consuming tasks, like creation of custom clamping assemblies for each set of pieces to be welded. The design and fabrication of the clamping assembly itself involves time and costs both for design and fabrication. These clamping assemblies cannot be adapted to other production tasks, and become waste themselves. The recent assembly processes are CAD file driven, including welding processes as well. In this case the envisioned solution consists of an innovative software that can be optionally linked to existing hardware components. The software component of CLAMPIT can analyse any given option saved in the CAD file in order to determine the best conditions (e.g.: clamping angles/forces/etc., the required setup elements for clamping, the appropriate points for clamping the assembly pieces, the layout for optimised part distribution on the work-bench, the proper part order of the welding, the directions of optimised welding trajectories, etc...) to complete the welding process. Namely any task on the welding-table is driven by the processed orders of the software component what are partial utilised by the hardware components and partial should be setup according the orders handcrafted by the skilled workers. The software will give important information to the user on its own, but it can also be linked to any existing versatile clamping table on the market allowing the user to determine measurable fixing positions of the items intended to be welded.'

Introduzione (Teaser)

Clamping is a critical first assembly step in welding and plays a critical role in the quality of the final part. An automated decision-support system (DSS) for intelligent welding clamp design will make sure small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) achieve high-precision assembly.

Descrizione progetto (Article)

The very high temperatures and forces during welding can cause deformation and distortion of the work piece. This in turn leads to increased manufacturing costs, material waste and lost time that puts increasing pressure on SMEs in the welding business. At the same time, the drive to create custom clamping devices that cannot be adapted to other assembly tasks supports the need for faster and better clamping assembly design.

With the support of EU funding, the project http://clampit.eu/ (CLAMPIT) (Intelligent Welding Clamp Design Software Using Computer-Aided Optimization For Smes To Achieve High Precision Assembly) developed a high-end DSS to automate clamping design calculations. The system exploits computer-aided design to determine the optimal distribution of clamping points and clamping forces for a given weldment configuration. Further, it includes a fast and efficient distortion prediction module incorporating low-stress, no-distortion technology.

The newly customised clamping fixture can be saved in the knowledge base, helping the system to learn with each iteration. Two project videos highlight the technology and the website hosts a number of documents for download, including leaflets, newsletters, posters and press releases.

CLAMPIT's DSS enables SMEs to automatically choose the optimal clamping design and process parameters for welding a new workpiece. By simulating predicted distortion before welding, CLAMPIT will help SMEs cut costs and time while increasing the performance of their welding fixtures and product quality, putting EU metal-working SMEs back in the driver's seat.