Design of Assembly Operations for Recycling Disassembly

Abstract

The process of automatic assembly and disassembly has become a key technology in recycling for protecting our environment. By having automatic disassembly processes to de-manufacture products at a lower cost, recycling efforts of a company can be accelerated and made to be profitable. In addition, the company becomes an environmentally friendly company.

This proposal presents a CAD/CAM framework of designing automated assembly operations and recycling disassembly for products. The proposed approach breaks the product life cycle into five parts. It starts from the design phase to tooling and manufacturing. The product is then sold and collected for de-manufacturing to complete the cycle. This proposal describes the use of an automatic product decomposition algorithm, product assembly/disassembly cost estimator, a Structured Assembly Coding System (SACS), and use of force compliant assembly and disassembly system to implement the SACS procedures. Product decomposition is a tool to help a CAD user to decide and follow design guidelines that are already determined to be helpful and therefore to reduce cost in manufacturing. The product designer will be able to use both the decomposition and cost estimator tools during the design process to modify a product so as to maximize assembly and recycling efficiencies.

Students

• Swee Mok
• Kenlip Ong (M.S. - December 2001)
• Yujun Xie