Virtual Reality Based Knowledge Acquisition and Job Training for Advanced Casting Skills

The environment where Japanese industry has beenpaid with respect is changing tremendously due to the globalization of economics, where Asian countries are undergoing economical and technical development as well as advancing in information technology. For example, in the design of custom-made casting product, a designer whom lacking of casting knowledge may not be able to produce a good design. In order to obtain a good design and manufacturing result, it is necessary to equip the designer and manufacturer with a support system related to casting design or so called, knowledge transfer and creation system. In recent years, the design supporting system using VR technology is developed, and introduced in the manufacturing industry. The merit of using VR system is being able to carry out the stereoscopy of the product model drawn by 3D CAD, and to carry out the design review of the product model in the same size as thing. However, since many systems extend the display of the conventional 3D CAD, they cannot input annotation and so on directly in VR environment. In this paper, the system which can input and display the annotation in VR environment is developed. By drawing annotation to the product model displayed on VR environment, sharing of technical tacit knowledge and engineers´ communication are promoted, and engineers becomes possible gaining physical tacit knowledge.