In many industries the focus in CAx based manufacturing has changed from fixed process chains to ones which can adapt to dynamic inputs. This way process chains can take measurement data into account to produce optimal results. Unfortunately, existing approaches do not integrate well with the existing CAx systems since they do not ensure that existing processes will be kept unchanged. This restriction leads to a low adaption rate in some industries. Especially in the aerospace industry every change in the manufacturing processes will result in high costs. In this paper it is shown that an extended function block approach can be integrated with existing CAx systems while allowing the modeling and controlling of adaptive process chains with reduced data loss at the same time. In order to achieve this goal, data port manifests are introduced which announce supported data formats and features of the corresponding function block. This extension reduces information loss at system interfaces and helps to ensure that required data will be transferred between function blocks. A case study will show how this extension can be used in a common CAx system.

Laser metal deposition is a very effective and precise technology applied by the manufacturers of turbomachinery parts to repair damages on parts in service or reclaim quality during manufacturing of new parts. The process chains to repair or refurbish turbomachinery parts are based upon a 3D laser scanning process which acquires digitalized models in the format of triangulated-meshes to represent the geometry of parts. This paper firstly studies a discrete geodesic method proposed by Mitchell, Mount and Papadimitriou (MMP) and based on this method proposes an optimized exact algorithm to generate precise laser paths on triangulated-mesh data of part geometry. Furthermore this paper presents an approximate method based on Sethian’s Fast Marching Method (FMM) and constructs vertex-based geodesic distance field on triangulated-meshes to divide the part surface in equal-distant stripes morphed from boundary curves. These two methods are compared and error condition is evaluated. During the research the methods are implemented into an automated LMD process planning software, which is utilized into industrial applications and obtained satisfactory results. The results from application of LMD process planning software are also demonstrated in this paper.

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.