Process Planning Based on User Preferences

Typical approaches to adaptive slicing in previous literature have typically used surface finish requirements to control the slicing process. As a result, slice schemes improve the part's surface quality, but do not enable explicit trade-offs between finish and build time. The purpose of this article is to present a process planning method that enables the preferences of the user for surface finish, build time, and accuracy to control how trade-offs are made in a process plan. A multiobjective goal formulation is used by this method to evaluate how well user preferences are met by a process plan. This method consists of three modules, for determining part orientation, for slicing the part, and for determining other parameter values. An example with several scenarios representing different user preferences is provided to illustrate the process planning method.