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Design Of A Low-Cost Cnc Milling Machine, Using Some Aspect Of Parallel
Engineering Concept
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UNIVERSITY OF PITESTI SCIENTIFIC BULLETIN
Faculty Of Mechanics And Technology AUTOMOTIVE series, year XXII, no. 26
DESIGN OF A LOW-COST CNC MILLING MACHINE, USING SOME
ASPECT OF PARALLEL ENGINEERING CONCEPT
Daniel – Constantin ANGHEL1*, Mihai Octavian CRĂCĂNEL
1
University of Pitesti,
Article history:
Received: 11.08.2016; Accepted: 10.10.2016.
Abstract: At the present time, the development of manufacturing technologies based on CNC systems allows of
the industry to obtain the complex products at high quality, in a short period of time. Thus, in the universities of
engineering exist a lot of courses of CNC manufacturing systems.
The practical training is essential to improve students learning in design and manufacturing engineering. In the
area of CAD / CAM, the high cost of CNC machines can be an impediment for giving to the students the
possibility to interact with the CNC machine.
To resolve this impediment, it was decided to design and to produce a low-cost CNC machine.
This paper describes the development process for this machine. In order to reduce the costs, we have used a
hardware Arduino UNO, a CNC shield, open source software (Arduino, G-Code and GRBL). The design was
made in Catia V5 and SolidWorks. Most of the parts of the machine was manufactured and assembly in the
laboratories of Faculty of Mechanics and Technology from University of Pitești.
Keywords: CNC machine, Arduino, open source hardware and software, low-cost concept.
INTRODUCTION
Parallel engineering is a systematic and comprehensive organizational approach of the
company, based on the simultaneous and integrated comportment of the product life cycle,
implementing multidisciplinary teams working in symbiosis and aiming at common
production cost-time- quality. The main characteristics of parallel engineering are:
parallel implementation of development activities;
integration and consideration of downstream activities during the upstream activities;
creation of multidisciplinary teams bringing together different actors involved in the
product development project;
optimization of existing development processes.
In the field of design, the main interests of implementing parallel engineering are reducing
costs, reducing design and marketing delays, and improving the quality of products [1, 2].
Indeed, the integration of "downstream" trades in the design phase makes it possible to detect
errors very early in the development process. The quality of the products is thus improved, the
additional costs due to the modifications are eliminated and the time to market is reduced.
The implementation of parallel engineering is based on two fundamental principles: the
parallelism of tasks and multidisciplinary teamwork.
The notion of parallelism can have two different meanings. The first concerns the comparison
of development activities, in particular the simultaneous design of the product and its
production process. The second concerns the simultaneous development of several solutions
in order to make the best choices at the earliest and thus avoid costly iterations.
The principle of multidisciplinary team work makes it possible to take into account, at each
level of development, considerations relating to the whole life cycle of the product. Thus, for
example, manufacturing constraints must be considered in the early stages of design.
It should be noted that the transition from the sequential approach to the parallel engineering
requires a change in the management process of the design process. The sequential method
*
Corresponding author: daniel.anghel@upit.ro
has the advantage of clearly indicating to the different managers the appropriate moments of
intervention on the future of the project where the information elements necessary for control
and decision-making are available. With the second form of organization, managers have to
adopt new ways of working in order to control the progress of the activities and their
interaction. In this, the management approach is profoundly altered.
PARALLEL DEVELOPMENT OF PRODUCT/PROCESS
Parallel development of product/process can be described using the two algorithms, Pahl and
Beitz algorithm and DFM algorithm, showed in Figure 1.
The Design for manufacturing (DFM) is an approach in which the products are designed so
that their manufacture is carried out efficiently.
Design for manufacturing approach takes into account a range of information on:
• Sketches, drawings, product specifications and design alternatives;
• The assembly process;
• Estimate the manufacturing costs, production volume and the duration of manufacturing etc.
Figure 1. Parallel development of product/process algorithm
According to the prescriptive model proposed by Pahl and Beitz [3], the design process
implies a succession of stages. During these stages, the designers suggest theories, concepts,
and suppositions to resolve the design problems. For our study, we have use the model
proposed by Pahl and Beitz in parallel with the model of developing manufacturing process.
DESIGN OF THE PRODUCT
The design of the product was realized in the Laboratory of Design and Product Development
at the University of Pitesti.
Planning and clarifying the task: All design challenges are ambiguous. The answer is
always uncertain or ambiguous. Not all design solutions are equally good, however, and some
are definitely wrong. A CNC machine has been designed, taking into account some aspect of
parallel engineering concept.
This machine is destined for the CAD/CAM laboratory of the universities and will be a cheap
solution for giving to the students the possibility to interact with an CNC machine.
Conceptual Design: Conceptual design is just like it sounds the generation of a concept.
Some of the terms used by Pahl and Beitz to describe it are: identify essential problems,
47
establish function structures, search for solution principles, combine and firm up concept
variants.
As a starting point, was considered the following representation:
Figure 2. The schematic of the CNC machine concept
The schematic contains the computer, the concept of the CNC machine, the CNC shield with
an Arduino Uno board, the drivers for the motor stepper and the logical and electrical
connections.
This representation leads to establishing a constructive form of the CNC machine, this form
will be gradually transformed into a technological form of machine (all of the parts of the
machine will be optimized in order to minimize the costs, the time to manufacturing, to make
simpler the assembly of the product). All this technological forms will be obtained based of
the restrictions of manufacturing technology.
Figure 3. The constructive form of machine tool table
Embodiment Design: Embodiment design consists of preliminary layouts and configurations,
selecting the most desirable preliminary layouts and refining and evaluating against technical
and economic criteria.
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Figure 4. The 3D prototype of the CNC milling machine
In order to reduce manufacturing costs, the different zones of the machine tool table, which
will mount assembly components, will be isolated and will be accurately processing and
another zone will be processing less precise.
Regarding technological restrictions in certain zones of the machine tool table will be made
grooves to increase access of the cutting tools.
Depending on the manufacturing technology adopted, the technological form can be quite
varied from case to case.
Another factor in determining the functional form is the possibility of assembly/disassembly.
The technological form is transformed for optimize the trajectories of cutting tools, and to
simplify their geometry.
Figure 5. The trajectories of cutting tools during the machining process
Detail Design: The detail design includes specifying the materials, the type and the size of
surfaces, where the attachment and assembly holes should be drilled, the size of the holes etc.
It requires a lot of skills to specify this multitude of items correctly. Many alternatives and
options should be considered during this part of the engineering design processes.
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Figure 6. The sketch of the final product
FINDINGS
Accomplishment of the design steps taking into account the manufacturing constraints makes
to occur the iterative cycles during design process. During these cycles, the solutions
proposed are subject to change in order to improve or correct certain geometric shape
parameters, precision dimensional or material.
Proposing solution x for the product
Estimate manufacturing costs,
in terms of TIME and tools
Optimization of the Realization of zones of access Costs of cutting
technological form for the cutting tools and for tools
orientation of product
Estimating the impact of DFM
decisions on other factors
Recalculating manufacturing costs
Not
Acceptable?
Yes
Acceptance of the proposed solution
Figure 7. Example of applying of the DFM algorithm
CATIA V5 and SolidWorks enables parallel development of product and manufacturing
technology, the shape of the processing zones resulting from tool trajectory optimization
process in order to reduce manufacturing costs.
50
CONCLUSIONS
The two-software utilised for designing the product give to the designers the possibility to
develop in parallel the product and the manufacturing technology, allowing the optimize the
technological form in parallel with the manufacturing technology.
The parallel development can reduce design time, has influence on product realization costs
and allows involving young designers with little experience.
On the other hand , at this stage , the costs increase much compared to the classical situation
because the software is expensive, the specialists has need of expensive training courses , and
lack of experience must be complemented by the support of software.
However, it is very advantageous from the point of view of the overall costs, and of the
development time of the product.
In addition, successive changes on the form of the final product can be easily monitored, and
any errors or deficiencies can be remedied in a short time, which in the classical approach
requires a laborious and lengthy work.
REFERENCES
[1] PERRIN, J., Concevoir l'innovation industrielle. Méthodologie de conception de l'innovation,
CNRS Editions, 2001;
[2] ANGHEL, D., RIZEA, A., Proiectarea produselor, Editura universitatii din Pitesti, 2008;
[3] PAHL, G., BEITZ, W., Engineering Design: A systematic approach, Springer-Verlag, 1996;
[4] BOXBERGER, J., SCHLEGEL, D., LEBAAL, N., & GOMES, S. Design Support Based onto
Knowledge to Increase Product Reliability and Allow Optimized Abacus Development. In IFIP
International Conference on Advances in Production Management Systems (pp. 200-207). Springer
Berlin Heidelberg, 2012.
[5] MISZTAL, A., BELU N., Model of areas for identifying risks influencing the compliance of
technological processes and products. IOP Conference Series: Materials Science and Engineering.
Vol. 145. No. 4. IOP Publishing, 2016.
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