Algorithms for CAD-Based Manufacturability and Assemblability Evaluation (DfMA)

Flanders Make

Flanders Make is the strategic research centre for the manufacturing industry. Our mission is to strengthen the long-term international competitiveness of the Flemish manufacturing industry. That’s why we work together with SMEs and large companies on pre-competitive, industry-driven technological research, resulting in concrete product and production innovation in the vehicle industry, the manufacturing industry, and production environments.

CodesignS – Design Techniques

Design Techniques is a tech domain withing the CodesignS Corelab that focusses on the design of complex assembly products and systems. Our research focusses on Design for Excellence (DfX) a design philosophy that tries to consider the whole product life cycle during the design stage. This internship will be part of our Design for Assembly and Design for Manufacturing research track.

Problem Context

Bringing new products into production requires a lot of preparation work of process engineers during which the product geometry and part list is analyzed and potential manufacturing or assembly issues are identified. This process requires a lot of expert knowledge and manual testing on physical prototypes. Daikin Europe N.V. Oostende has worked together with Flanders Make to develop a first prototype Design for Manufacturing and Assembly tool to support the process engineer with this complex analysis.

Goal of the internship

The goal of this internship is to help us further develop algorithms in FreeCAD that can automatically evaluate the manufacturability and assemblability of copper pipes in an air conditioning unit. With this algorithm the process engineer will be able to assess a new product design before it goes in production. By identifying manufacturing or assembly issues virtually, the number of costly tests on physical prototypes can be reduced.

Technical Approach

First the knowledge of the process engineer need to be captured formalized through an interview and plant visit. This will result in into a set of rules that can be applied to evaluate the manufacturability and assemblability of a new product. To automate the evaluation of these rules, an algorithm will be developed that first needs to correctly identify the pipes and their brazing connections and then evaluate if the pipe geometry can be realized with the pipe bending process and the connections can be realized through brazing by a human operator.

Learning targets

During this internship you will learn:

• how Computer Aided Design (CAD) software works under the hood;
• how to do feature recognition on 3D geometries;
• how to formalize assembly and manufacturing rules for a product;
• how to implement algorithms that can evaluate a product CAD file;
• how a research organization like Flanders Make operates.

Profile Student

We are looking for a student with one of following bachelor degrees:

• Civil engineering
• Industrial engineering
• Computer science

• • and has experience with the following technologies:
    • Git version control system;
    • Object oriented programming in Python or C++;
    • Computer aided design (CAD) software;
  • Following expertise could be a plus:
    • Prior experience with programming in FreeCAD;
    • Experience with Machine learning for classification;
  • We are looking for someone who is:
    • Interested in geometric reasoning on CAD;
    • Result oriented, responsible and proactive;
    • A good communicator, able to communicate in English;
    • Eager to interact both with academia and industry.

Only EEA (or Swiss) nationals can be accepted for internships due to work permit regulations.

Practical Data

• • Internship: The assignment is for an internship of min. 3 months to maximum 6 months and takes place at the offices of Flanders Make located in Leuven, Belgium.

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