Computer-aided Process Planning of Strip Layout in Progressive Dies

This paper proposes a two-step process which uses the knowledge gathered in sheet-metal manufacturing practice as the basis to find proper layouts of strip in progressive dies. In the first step, manufacturing knowledge is used to formulate various rules to cluster the punches into five categories for reducing the searching space of feasible layouts. Evaluation functions are then applied to find the better ones from the feasible layouts. This two-step process provides a new approach to solving the problem of "explosive combinations" in strip layout design