Gc. Han et Sj. Na, GLOBAL TORCH PATH GENERATION FOR 2-D LASER CUTTING PROCESS USING SIMULATED ANNEALING, Intelligent automation and soft computing, 4(2), 1998, pp. 97-108
Recently the major objective of laser processing in production line is
the precision or shape cutting of sheet metals. This paper addresses
the problem of a torch path generation for the 2D laser cutting of a s
tock plate nested with irregular parts. In this paper, the basic objec
t is a polygon(a many-sided figure) with holes. Under the constraint o
f the relative positions of parts enforced by nesting, the developed t
orch path algorithm generates feasible cutting paths. The objective of
this work is to traverse this cutting contours with a minimum path le
ngth. The proposed torch path algorithm is based on a simulated anneal
ing, that is an improved version of previously suggested TSP models. S
ince every piercing point of parts is not fixed in advance, the algori
thm solves an relaxed optimization problem with constraints. For solvi
ng the torch path optimization problem an efficient generation mechani
sm of neighborhood structure and annealing schedule were presented. In
this way, a global solution can be obtained in a reasonable time. Sev
eral examples are represented to illustrate the method.