Methodology for Metalcasting Process Selection

Today, there are several hundreds of manufacturing processes available to the designer to choose from, and the number is constantly increasing. The ability to choose a manufacturing process for a particular user need set in the early stage of the design process is necessary. In metalcasting alone, there are over forty different processes with different capabilities. A designer can benefit from knowing the manufacturing process alternatives available to him. Inaccurate process selection can lead to financial losses and market share erosion. This paper discusses a methodology for selection of a metalcasting process based on a number of user specified attributes or requirements. A model of user requirements was developed and these requirements were matched with the capabilities of each metalcasting process. The metalcasting process which best meets these needs is suggested. The selection is based on the weighted algorithm that considers both the relative importance of each user requirement as well as the relative ease of meeting the requirement by different metalcasting processes. The method has been deployed on the web and can be easily accessed by a browser with minimal client side deployment. The implementation is currently limited to the most common metalcasting processes and materials.