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Welcome the the Manufacturing Advisory Service (MAS) Basic Tutorial.  This tutorial desribes starting up the MAS, and how to do a simple search, using the example of a prototype mouse housing (the top portion).

Note that your screen may look different from the images on this page, as certain Java GUI components appear different on different computer systems.

Start Up the Applet

While the applet is loading, the "Init Info" window will indicate the various initialization steps.  The database date gives you an indication how recently the material and process capability has been updated. You will now see a screen with a column of buttons on the left hand side of the screen, which will be refereed to as the 'button panel' or 'button column.'  At the very bottom of the applet is a message box that will sometimes display important information (Initially is says " "Welcome to the Manufacturing Analysis Service, v2.xx").

Click on the "Process Search" button in the upper left to begin.

Process Search

You will now see five new columns. The two columns that you will be clicking on a lot are the 'Requirement List' column, and the 'Options List' column.  Facets are attributes of your part that the MAS uses to make decisions and rankings.  Possibilities are manufacturing processes (or materials) that the MAS has classified in its database.

For our prototype mouse housing, we'll only need a few to play around with in the lab, so lets set our batch size -- how many parts we want -- to four.Now, let's look at the data entry area.

The label identifies which facet you are currently editing. The value shows what the numerical value of the current facet is.  Any value less than zero tells the MAS to ignore this facet. The units shows what unit system the value is in.  For batch size, the value is simply a count of the total number of parts to be manufactured.  The scroll bar is used to dynamically change the value of a facet. For some of the facets, the scroll bar is on a logarithmic scale. You can use the scroll bar to change the value, or type a value directly into the value box.
 

Since the scroll bar ranges from 1 part on the far left to 15000 parts on the far right, it's probably not the best way to specify the number 4.  Instead, click in the value box, and change the '-1' to '4' using standard text editing methods (NOTE: Don't use commas when typing in numbers!). As soon as you do this, you should notice that the 'O-rank' column has switched from an empty long blank black box -- to being filled with some green bars.

These colored bars represent the rank of the possible processes. If a possible manufacturing process has a colored bar that completely crosses the black region, it is ideally suited to make the part you have described.  You can display a numeric rank by clicking the preferences button.So, even with only one piece of information, you can look at the Options List and see that 'Closed Die Forging' is not suitable for making four parts, while CyberCut milling is ideally suited.

Exploring the Shape Facet

But this isn't a particularly complicated definition, let's get some more information in.  Click on 'Shape' in the Requirement List. The data entry area now contains only the label 'Shape' and a choice box. 

Before we select the shape we have to figure out what shape to choose.  With 'Shape' still highlighted in the 'Requirement List' column, click the 'Get Info' button to find out more about choosing the right shape.  Looking down the list of shapes, Thinwall seems to be the best match, as the phone housing has the same general shape as the top portion of our mouse housing. So go back to the choice box under the shape label in the data entry area, and select thinwall.

Some of the rank bars have disappeared. The rank bars now have grey bars directly above them. The grey bars are the history bars -- which shows the ranks of the processes before you modified the shape facet. The grey bars are there to indicate how much the rank has changed, or to indicate that your last change actually made it impossible to make a part with a given process. If this is the case, there will be a grey bar without a color bar underneath.

Finishing Up The Design

Select  'Bounding Box' from the Requirement List, and enter 3 cubic inches in the data entry area. Skip the 'Material' facet, we don't really care what the material is, we just want the component to do some rudimentary ergonomic tests. Enter a dimensional tolerance of 50 inches^-3 (50 milli-inches), a surface roughness of 15 microinches, and a wall thickness of 0.1 inches.
 
Sheet Metal Forming is the only process left!  This confuses you, because your engineering intuition thought that stereolithography was the best choice.  So let's do a little investigation to find out what happened.

Ranking Investigation

Click once on stereolithography in the 'Options List.' the ranks in the 'O-rank' column have disappeared.  Instead, look over in the 'R-rank' column.  What we now see is each one of the facets you've specified being ranked individually for the stereolithography process you have selected.  Some facets are ignored ("Ig"), and of the rest all but surface roughness should be equal to 100.  This means that only our surface roughness criteria (ranked at zero) has made stereolithography invalid.  So let's find out more about surface roughness.

Click on Surface Roughness in the 'Requirement List' and click 'Get Info'.  The secondary window now gives you some more info about surface roughness.  From the table, we can see that a normal good appearance is rated Medium at 250 microinches.  Our value of 15 is actually a Very Fine Finish on the table, much more than we need.  Click on Surface Rough in the Requirement List and change the surface roughness to 250.

Now stereolithography has been bumped up to 100 percent! You may need to click on stereolithography again to update the R-Rank column. But now there are other highly ranked processes you haven't heard anything about:  CyberCut Milling and ME3 Pseudo Diecasting.  If you want to find out more, select them and click 'Get Info.'

Exploring with the MAS

Remember,  the MAS is not a 'black box' tool that blindly chugs numbers. Its an exploratory tool. If a possibility you feel is acceptable has a zero rank, click on it to find out why it is being rejected. Then in the r-rank column, it will show which facet(s) have a zero ranking. Go back to these facets and explore how new readings on the slider bar or choices give a non-zero rank.

One of the more common tendancies when using the MAS is to start with the first facet in the list, define it, and then march straight down the list of facets defining them as you go. This robs you of the chance to discover the individual facets' effects on the ranking. A lot can be learned by allowing yourself to explore the effects on the possibility rankings when you vary a single facet.

To examine the relationship of a single fact to the Options List, click the 'Reset' button, and then click 'Process Search.' Now, select the material facet, and choose a material you aren't very familiar with. The listing in the O-rank column now shows you the compatibility that your selected material has with each one of the processes. You can do the same kind of interaction with any of the facets, just remember to hit reset, otherwise the O-ranks will be based on more than one facet.