Generating Multi-Stage Molding Plans for Articulated Assemblies

Multi-stage molding is capable of producing better-quality articulated products at a lower cost. During the multi-stage molding process, assembly operations are performed along with the molding operations. Hence, it adds new constraints to the assembly planning problem. This paper introduces the problem of generating multi-stage molding plans for articulated assemblies. We present detailed algorithms for determining the molding sequence and intermediate assembly configurations.