Towards Automated Capturing of CMM Inspection Strategies

Abstract

In product quality testing, many systems for automated CMM inspection planning have been developed; most being in the form of expert systems using knowledge bases and rules extracted from documentation such as handbooks and manuals. However, in these studies, there is no explicitly formalized methodology on how to prepare CMM measurements, to help human planners to produce new inspection plans. Current systems are not capable of quickly and accurately capturing the expertise of experienced CMM programmers performing inspection planning and, consequently, the expert knowledge implied in these plans is lost. This work proposes a tool for capturing inspection strategies along with the knowledge generated by CMM programmers. Preliminary results from pilot studies are presented showing the benefits of such a methodology. The strategies captured could potentially be used in future inspection planner training or for automated CMM/robotic inspection programming, while the captured knowledge could be embedded in CAD systems designed for inspection routines.