What is it about?
It is about applying reverse engineering and redesign methodology to proto-type water jet cutting machine (WJCM) to meet the requirements of small-scale industries. The intensifier, which is the key component of a WJCM, is mainly responsible for the high cost. In addition to that some parts must be frequently replaced with the new ones due to excessive wear and tear. In order to reduce the manufacturing and operation costs, this study concentrates on the redesign of an intensifier used in a previous prototype. It provides a novel redesign methodology to improve the existing proto-type intensifier. The function/means tree, which is a method of modelling a product by the systematic and hierarchical decomposition of functions and means to arrange on different levels, was also used to represent the complete description of the first alpha-prototype intensifier.
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Why is it important?
The present study is a first attempt to redesign an intensifier of a WJCM using low-cost criteria as a main objective. It is important because it provides a novel reverse engineering and redesign methodology that is particularly suitable for proto-type development. It also applies it to a proto-type WJCM. It introduces the components of an initial alpha-prototype WJCM system including its intensifier. It presents the final prototype intensifier with its design details, the design specifications and the design enhancements leading to high ease of service and low-cost intensifier based on the results of reverse engineering, and modelling and analysis studies. It also provides morphological matrix and function means tree for the first and final intensifiers.
Perspectives
Technical and economical requirements, as well as the main principle used on the double-acting intensifiers, constitute strong design constraints, not permitting drastic modifications. However, the application of modified redesign methodology provided variety of design changes. Such a redesign is not expected to eliminate all the problems of the double-acting WJCM intensifiers, but rather to alleviate them and reduce overall development and maintenance cost by reducing the part count, design time, manufacturing complexity and cost, disassembly and assembly costs. The modified redesign procedure, which provided various enhancements, was a systematic approach for product redevelopment, and can be applied for the development of final proto-type machineries. We hope you find this article useful and apply the redesign methodology to other machineries. We will also be very pleased to see the applications of the study in other areas to redesign final alpha proto-types.
Prof. Dr. Necdet Geren
University of Çukurova
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Improvement of a low-cost water jet machining intensifier using reverse engineering and redesign methodology, Journal of Engineering Design, February 2007, Taylor & Francis,
DOI: 10.1080/09544820600650928.
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