Abstract
Custom-tailored products are meant by the products having various sizes and shapes to meet the customer's different tastes or needs. Thus fabrication of custom-tailored products inherently involves inefficiency. To minimize this inefficiency, a new paradigm is proposed in this work. In this paradigm, different parts are grouped together according to their sizes and shapes. Then, representative shape of each group is derived and it will be used as the work-piece from which the parts in the group are machined. Once a new product is ordered, the optimal work-piece is selected through making similarity comparisons of new product and each representative shape. Then an effective NC tool-path is generated to machine only the different portions between the work-piece and the ordered product. The efficient machining conditions are also derived from this shape difference. By machining only the different portions between the work-piece and the ordered product, it saves time. Similarity comparison starts with the determination of the closest pose between two shapes in consideration. The closest pose is derived by comparing the ray distances while one shape is virtually rotated with respect to the other. Shape similarity value and overall similarity value calculated from ray distances are used for grouping. A prototype system based on the proposed methodology has been implemented and applied to the grouping and machining of the shoe lasts of various shapes and sizes.