A Thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Engineering, School of Advanced Technologies

Thesis (M.Eng.) - Asian Institute of Technology, 2001

There are few methods used for creating jewelry; the conventional method is handcrafting by a craftsman and another method is rapid prototyping technology (RPT). The study reported here considers a third approach; the use of Computer -Aided Design (CAD), Computer-Aided Manufacturing (CAM), and Computer Numerical Control (CNC) to manufacture a ring and select machine kinematics for machining a ring. A five-axis machine is considered for two reasons; five degrees of freedom are the minimum required to obtain flexibility in workpiece orientation. The workpiece orientation is required for machining round surfaces of a ring. The most suitable machine kinematics can be selected by considering parameters such as the machine tool workspace, the workspace utilization factor, the machine tool space efficiency, the orientation index, the largest sphere that can be milled by the fDve-axis machine, and the orientation angle index among all fiveaxis configurations. The machine tool workspace is the primary parameter used for computing another parameters. To get the machine tool workspace, inverse transformation is done to create a set of points. The volume of this point set is the machine tool workspace. If the machine tool workspace is set on the machine, the machine tool workspace will be the intersection between the machine and the machine tool workspace, or the machine tool workspace after subtracting the interference of the machine.