Conceptual design of intelligent reconfigurable welding fixture for rail car manufacturing industry
Walter Thabo Seloane, Khumbulani Mpofu, Boitumelo Ramatsetse, Dithoto Modungwa
Abstract
Dedicated welding fixtures are used in the railcar manufacturing industry to fix and stabilise the welded components during the welding assembly process in order to achieve the highest possible accuracy and repeatability of connected components. Utilisation of dedicated welding fixtures in a railcar manufacturing industry leads to high production setup, high manufacturing costs, low quality standards and storage difficulties. Furthermore, because of lack of ability to disassemble, traditional welding fixtures cost a fortune in storage costs. In order to reduce cost, increase productivity and meet the market demands, there is a growing requirement for the tools to be flexible, reconfigurable and re-constructible. This paper presents the conceptual designs of the intelligent reconfigurable welding fixtures aimed to address the current problems encountered by the railcar manufacturing industry when utilizing dedicated fixtures. Three design concepts of the Intelligent Reconfigurable Welding Fixture (IRWF) were generated using Computer Aided Design (CAD) called Unigraphics. Weight design matrix concept evaluation criteria was used to select the most suitable concept based on functional requirements such as reconfigurability, intelligence, assembly, manufacturability and maintenance ability. Concept 3 was selected because it satisfied most of the functional requirements of the IRWF.