Internet-based collaborative virtual assembly/disassembly for e-manufacturing

e-Manufacturing is a new paradigm for collaborative manufacturing dealing with design, manufacture, assembly, disassembly and recycling in a collaborative virtual space on the Internet. Assembly/disassembly (e-Assembly) is an important activity of manufacturing. e-Assembly the technology envisaged in our research addresses the issues involved with assembling/disassembling a product collaboratively during the design stage, rather than at a later stage as is currently the practice. Technologies to support e-Assembly, like interactive visualization in 3D, collaborative assembly/disassembly, collaborative maintenance, collaborative recycling, and concurrent engineering will also address and support many of the activities of the product cycle. It is envisaged to investigate the methodology to perform collaborative virtual assembly/disassembly based on 3D CAD models using the Internet/Intranet. In particular the following would be investigated in this paper: To automatically/collaboratively generate an assembly/disassembly sequence and an efficient path by deploying assembly/disassembly instructions/knowledge or heuristics. To provide capability to interactively visualize an assembly/disassembly sequences and paths. To evaluate and post assembly/disassembly cost/benefits based on the different sequences and paths. A system called Motive3D is developed to demonstrate this methodology. For more information about Motive3D, please visit http://emedia.engr.wise.edu/motive3d.