A knowledge-based system to assist materials selection for plastics injection molds manufacturing

Abstract

The objective of the research is to create a knowledge-based system to assist old manufacturers to select materials for making injection molds. A knowledge-based system to assist material selection for plastic injection mold manufacturing (MATSEL-VPEX ) has been developed by means of VP-Expert Version 3.1 on a PC computer. In the procedure of system construction, the forward rule-based mechanism, the backward rule-based mechanism, the use of database files (dBase IV), the user interface in form of both graphic and text mode were implemented. In the materials selection process, the user is questioned about the the desired properties for the final injection mold created such as the mechanical, thermal, chemical resistant, physical properties and the weight accordingly with the system's user requirement for the final product. The selection process comprises two stage. The first stage is to identify which materials properties for final injection mold are selected; any mold making materials which can not serve the user's requirement are eliminated. The second stage of the selection process is related to ranking of the properties desired by weighing the system's user requirement to arrive at some balanced compromise solutions. Afterward, the selected mold making materials are rank on the basic of each mold material's given score depending on the range of properties are calculated by using of AIM (Alternative Inference Mechanism).