Towards a Cax-Framework for Adaptive Programming Using Generic Process Blocks for Manufacturing

Over the last years the aerospace industry demands for increasingly complex process chains, as worn, high-value parts have to be repaired and resources have to be used more efficiently. To cope with this growing complexity, tool support ist required for different reasons. The process chains have to be layed out, the knowledge of the processes has to be captured and should be easily available. Furthermore, process chains evolve over time and it should be possible to use the research results to optimize in-use process chains. In this paper it is shown how the function block approach can be extended by “Generic Process Blocks for Manufacturing” (GPBM) in order to meet these requirements for offline adaptive process chains. For this, GPBM introduces a new placeholder function block which supports the reuse and exchange of already modeled process chains. In addition, a case study discusses how this approach can help to transfer a process chain originally designed for tip repair of a single gas-turbine airfoil to a blade integrated disk (BLISK) and how the corresponding process chain knowledge can be stored in a common place.