Based on region division setup planning for sheet metal assembly in aviation industry

The task of setup planning is to determine the number and sequence of setups and the machining features or operations in each setup. Due to the locating method's character, the position of the locators may keep away joining tools from arriving at joining points during the joining process of sheet metal. In order to solve these problems, a novel method is proposed, which consists of three parts: (1) the points on the skin are divided into sets of supplied riveting and prior riveting points by convex hull generating method; (2) fixture vector is defined, and a suitable fixture region is generated by vector multiplication; and (3) the particle swarm optimization algorithm is applied to generate optimal setup scheme by setting up the parameters. The new setup planning approach can accomplish riveting work by minimum setup times and workpiece variation without finite element analysis software. At last, a certain kind of aircraft wing joining process is illustrated as an example to demonstrate the effect of the proposed approach.