Optimization of the Useful Sheet Remnant Nesting for the NC Machine

The task of useful sheet remnant nesting is as important as that of nesting of standard sheets; however, in practice, it is usually solved manually because of the complexity of the work with the irregular shape of the remnant and analysis of the defective areas. A method is proposed for searching for nonstandard sheets for nesting without remainder for a given order. The method is based on analysis of the nesting order composition—a grouping of the drawings of all parts and determination of the prevailing type of the parts. The process of determination of the necessary groups is considered. Each group of parts is described by a combination of the dimensionless geometric features, for which reason, if necessary, the list of groups can be supplemented or reduced for the use at a particular enterprise. Knowing of the prevailing group of the parts allows the nesting system to exclude inefficient nesting from consideration. The model of the proposed method is based on calculation and analysis of the nesting coefficient and has optimal conditions for controlling the amount of the used useful remnants. The implementation and testing of the developed method were carried out based on the nesting software package ITAS Nesting at several known test assemblies. The testing revealed the more high-quality results of nesting as compared to the existing algorithms of the ITAS Nesting nesting system.