Session: DFMLC-08-01-Special Session-Design Tool Showcase

Paper Number: 88075

88075 - Medema Partanalyzer: Automated Cost and Runtime Estimation for Metals Manufacturing 

PartAnalyzer is the result of academic Boeing-sponsored research published at this conference and other similar publications. The tool can be seen as a competitor to other tools that do “product cost management”. Such tools sit between CAD and CAM, and are intended to provide design for manufacturability and cost insights to engineering designers. Unlike existing commercial tools (most notably aPriori), PartAnalyzer generates detailed machining plans and present various alternative for making a part. A spin-out company, Medema Labs, was started by the author and the leading PhD graduate from the initial research. The company launched a beta version of the work with an improved user-interface known as Medema PartAnalyzer. The software is intended for large mechanical design companies like vehicle manufacturers, but it also finding viability as way to speed-up and improve accuracy of estimated machining times for machine shop quoting.

The attached figure shows a screenshot of the software. The part is first loaded in from CAD in Section-A. Next, a series of different manufacturing simulations are run and the results are tabulated in Section-B. For each result, the user can open a detailed cost breakdown (Section-C) and see details of the various machining actions (Section-D). Each machining action includes a 3D version of the staging model and details on the cutting operation (note: values for “feeds” and “speeds” on the bottom right). These are all created automatically using a combination of computational geometry, numerical optimization, and artificial intelligence.

Current efforts in the further development of Medema PartAnalyzer are focused on machine learning calibration and the web front-end for accessing the underlying simulation. An SBIR grant is underway that focuses on leveraging the cost and time prediction as a way to help small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) perform a cost benefit analysis on the procurement of large capital equipment. The idea is that Medema PartAnalyzer will perform estimates for new or previous workorders both with and without the use of new machining equipment. The improvement in operational time and cost for future equipment is then used to create a return-on-investment report for the adoption of said new equipment.

Presenting Author: Matthew Campbell Oregon State University

Presenting Author Biography: Dr. Matt Campbell is a mechanical engineering professor with research focusing on automating difficult or tedious engineering design tasks. For over 20 years, he has focused on methods that independently create solutions for typical mechanical engineering design problems like gear trains, sheet metal, planar mechanisms, and planning for manufacturing, assembly and disassembly. As such he has become a world-class expert in a variety of fields such as machine design, design theory, artificial intelligence, graph theory and numerical optimization. He has over a hundred published articles and has been acknowledged with best paper awards at conferences by the ASME, ASEE, and the Design Society. He received his PhD from Carnegie Mellon University in 2000 with honors and membership in Phi Kappa Phi and Pi Tau Sigma. He became an ASME fellow in 2020.

Authors:

Matthew Campbell Oregon State University