A Web-Based Collaborative Design Tool for Micro Manufacture

Micro manufacture is the production of products whose functional features or at least one dimension are in the order of mu m. The production of micro products differs from the production for conventional products in many ways, not only the size of the products, but also the issues concerning the material properties, tooling, equipment and handling. These differences drive the need for a new design methodology and associated design tools to aid designers to assess their micro product design. This paper describes the development of a Web-Based Collaborative Design Tool (WBCDT) for assessing product design for micro-manufacturing in Masmicro project. The WBCDT supports the knowledge intensive collaboration among the micro-product designers and the discrete organizations through Internet. In the WBCDT, a knowledge model with the classified assessment modules and knowledge representatives is cleated to implement the distributed design and manufacturing assessment. The modules address the assessment on the following issues: geometry features relating to manufacturability, manufacturing process, availability and selection of tool and machine, material and manufacturing cost. The Microsoft C# programming language, ASP.NET web technology and Microsoft Access database are used to develop the WBCDT. Users can access the User Interface (UI) of the WBCDT in a specified service server to assess and optimise their product design. Users can also access the knowledge base and Knowledge-Based Decision System (KBDS) which are integrated into the WBCDT. The WBCDT prototype system has been tested with assessment of the micro-products for micro-forming which shows increase of design efficiency in knowledge intensive, web-based collaborative design environment.