A Digital Twin-Driven Improved Design Approach of Drawing Bench for Brazing Material

Brazing materials can be made into different shapes to meet the requirements of different scenarios and the welding rod is a very common form. The rough-processed welding rods must be properly finished by the drawing bench to remove the oxide film on the surface and made into a uniform diameter. However, the continuous welding rod often breaks resulting low production efficiency. To reduce the frequency of workers’ reconnection operation of broken welding rods, we proposed a digital twin-based approach to improve the design of the structure of the drawing bench. First, we established a full life cycle digital twin model for the welding rod from the formulation stage to the finishing stage. The product ontology of the welding rod was built and the key process parameters were collected. Second, based on the product ontology, the key structural parameter of the drawing bench that affects the internal stress of the welding rod was determined by means of analytic hierarchy process. Third, we modified the key structural parameter in the digital twin model and simulated the finishing process. A near-optimal parameter was found. Last, we improved the structure of the actual drawing bench accordingly and carried out some experiments. The results matched well with the simulation prediction and the frequency of welding rod breaking is significantly reduced, which proved the effectiveness of our proposed improved design approach.