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Repetitive movements have been found to affect assembly operations in many ways such as increasing the risk of injuries, increasing the cost of production, and reduction in the quality of products. This has been a big problem for industries. The method adopted by these studies seems to pose more injuries to workers as workers need to perform a task to the extreme level of pain to determine if repetitive injuries will occur or not. The method of modeling and simulation of human operations is a valid technique that is effective, but could be complex. Some of the modeling and simulation software packages make use of such guidelines as NIOSH, Snook and Ciriello, RULA, REBA, and Biomechanics single action analysis. However, various applications of these tools in actual ergonomic studies tend to be very time consuming and trivial due to the lack of a valid framework to guide the process.

This paper presents the conceptual design of 5dof tripod-based parallel kinematic machine system to be applied in the magnesium alloy castings finishing industry. The design starts from the industrial requirements and process needs, then propose the most promising architecture and mobility. With the structure, kinematic/dynamic analysis is conducted, and stiffness model is established, it can be further used for stiffness control and design optimization. The genetic algorithms is applied for structure optimization. Finally, an experiment of prototype is setup to validate the methods and models.