The modular design of mechanical products began in the early 20th century around 1920. The principle of modular design began in the design of machine tools, to the 1950s, some countries in Europe and the United States formally put forward the concept of "modular design", the modular design to the theoretical height of the study. Modular design and product standardization design, series design is closely related to the so-called "three". The "three" influence each other, mutual constraints, usually together as an important indicator for assessing the quality of products, is an important means of modern design. At present, the idea of modular design has penetrated into many fields, for example, machine tools, home appliances, computers and so on. In each field, module and modular design has its specific meaning, this book refers to the modular design of mechanical products.
In order to develop different products with multiple functions, it is not necessary to apply a separate design to each product, but to carefully design a variety of modules, which will be combined in different ways to form different products, in order to solve the product variety, specifications, and design and manufacturing cycle, the contradiction between the cost, which is the meaning of the modularization design. Module refers to a group with the same function and joint elements (refers to the shape and size of the joint parts, the joints between the fit and engagement, etc.), but the performance, specifications or structure of different but interchangeable units.
Machine tool fixtures, couplings can be referred to as modules, some parts such as plugs, sockets, in a broad sense can also be referred to as a module, but not as good as called standard parts. In modular design, also used a large number of standard parts, but the module refers to the standard parts outside, still need to be designed and can be used in different combinations, so as to form a unit of equipment with different functions.
Modular design refers to the product in the market forecast, functional analysis based on the division and design of a series of common functional modules; and according to the user's requirements, the combination of these modules to choose, you can constitute a different function or function of the same, but with different performance, different specifications of the product, such as shown in Figure 4-25.
Figure 4-25 Computer Fan Modular Design Module standardization refers to the standardization of module structure, especially module interface standardization. Modular design relies on the combination of modules, that is, the connection or engagement, also known as the interface. Obviously, in order to ensure the combination of different functional modules and the interchangeability of modules with the same function, the module should have the two characteristics of combinability and interchangeability, and these two characteristics are mainly reflected in the interface, which must be improved in the degree of standardization, generalization and specification. For example, units with the same function and different performance must have the same mounting base and the same mounting dimensions to ensure the effective combination of modules. In the computer industry, as a result of the standard bus structure, from different countries and regions manufacturers of the module can be composed of computer systems and coordinated work, so that these manufacturers can focus on the spirit of mass production of certain specific modules, and continue to carry out careful improvement and research, prompting the computer technology to achieve unprecedented development. In contrast, the mechanical industry for modular design of the standardization work done by some inferior. Modular design in mechanical products is used in only a few industries.
The principle of modular design is to strive to form as many products as possible with a small number of modules, and in order to meet the requirements of the basis of high precision, stable performance, simple structure, low cost, and the module structure should be as simple as possible, standardized, and as simple as possible to link the modules. Therefore, how to divide the module scientifically and in a controlled manner is an artful work in modularization design, not only to take care of the manufacturing management is convenient, with greater flexibility, to avoid the combination of confusion, but also to take into account the future expansion of the module series and to the specialization of the radiation, deformation of the product. Module division of good and bad directly affects the success of the module series design.
With the penetration of computer application technology to all walks of life and the development of computer-aided design as the main body of modern design, modular design has formed a computer as a tool to modular design as the goal of a variety of disciplines cross-fertilization of new technology areas, such as computer-aided modular design, fuzzy modular design, intelligent modular design, optimization of the modular design, etc., these tools in turn promote the development of modular design ideas.