A knowledge-based blackboard framework for stamping process planning in progressive die design

It is widely accepted that stamping process planning for the strip layout is a key task in progressive die design. However, stamping process planning is more of an art rather than a science. This is in spite of recent advances in the field of artificial intelligence, which have achieved a lot of success in incorporating built-in intelligence and applying diverse knowledge to solving this kind of problem. The main difficulty is that existing knowledge-based expert systems for stamping process planning lack a proper architecture for organizing heterogeneous knowledge sources (KSs) in a cooperative decision making environment. This paper presents a knowledge-based blackboard framework for stamping process planning. The proposed approach speeds up the progressive die design process by automating the strip layout design. An example is included to show the effectiveness of the proposed approach.

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