Development of digital tools for machine configuration and machining process optimization

Company: Gildemeister Italiana S.p.A.

Tutor: Gianluca D’Urso

As part of Gildemeister Italiana’s growth strategies, we highlight the intention to develop products based on modular platforms for defining the configuration of multiprocess machines.

In other words, the intention is to move from the concept of a customer who has to adapt his process to a machine available in the catalog to a customer who can commission a machine with a high degree of customization.

While this approach provides a great deal of freedom/flexibility in configuration as well as process adaptation, the need for a kind of “Navigation System” to support and guide supplier and customer in evaluating optimal strategies emerges.

In fact, by providing customers with a wide range of machine configurations, they may be unprepared; having many more configuration possibilities i.e., many more degrees of freedom or “free” parameters, choosing and comparing possible combinations could be extremely complex.

In order to prevent a solution with great potential from becoming a limitation, this new approach will have to be accompanied by software tools that can support customers in machine configuration.

Based on the above, this research project aims to develop a tool to digitize, simulate and optimize the main aspects of a machining process and its application to different machines or configurations.

Once the part to be machined, the operations and the technological sequence have been defined, the tool should automatically provide support in the distribution of the work cycle on the different operating units, allowing the optimization of the configuration and the balancing of the work cycle itself.