Intelligent methods helping the design of a manufacturing system for die extrusion rubbers

Resumen

In this paper, the authors propose a new and intelligent method that is useful for the design of specific tools for rubber extrusion. The methodology developed can be used with several types of materials, such as rigid mono-component profiles, monocomponent glass run channels, bior multi-component profiles, and so on. The underlying idea is that, in most cases, the basic problem lies in getting a proper shape in order to obtain the desired section of rubber and the correct properties. Obviously, the position of the shape changes as it depends on the type of product extruded (rigid rubber single profiles, monocomponent glass run channels, bi or multi-component profiles, and so on). Since the determination of the shape is a very complex task, the authors propose to use an expert system with rules based on the final aspect of the product, on an automatic procedure to select the right 'pattern' in order to apply the appropriate rules, and also on another automatic procedure to select the best function identifying the segment's correspondence between the pattern and the current product.