The Research Of Garment CNC Cutting Path Optimization

With the continuous development of garment technology, more and more garmentcompanies apply the clothing garment CAD/CAM. The garment computer numericalcontrol cutter as the most high-end product of CAM, because of its high-speed cutting、high precision and automation, more and more clothing companies began to use CNCcutting instead of the traditional manual cutting currently. Firstly, the garment CADgenerates garment layout diagram, then the garment cutting accords the requirement ofgarment layout diagram, setting the parameter of cutter and do the cutting. While in theprocess of cutting, the operators usually neglect the empty cutting problem. As the speed ofcutting is fixed, the less length traveling among the different garment pieces, the less timewill be cost and the more improvement of cutting efficiency. So in this paper we dosystematic study of the empty cutting length in the process of garment CNC.In this paper, we combine the structure of garment CNC with the working principle ofgarment CNC and the graph theory. And summed up of the traveling salesman problem、the generalized traveling salesman problem and NP-complete problem, the empty cuttingpath problem into the generalize traveling salesman problem and solve it.Combined the knowledge of graph theory and the generalize traveling salesmanproblem, this paper has developed two mathematical models of empty clothing CNCcutting path. One is called the point-set model; it focuses on the knife-in point of eachgarment pieces, and then constructs and optimizes the cutting path. The other one isdata-flow model. it defines the garments’ cutting order firstly and then regularizes theknife-in point.By analyzing the data of the garment layout diagram that generated from the garmentCAD, the data of garment layout diagram can be read and some important joints from thegarment samples are extracted. For the question of searching point, two modules: one is forlimiting the searching point while the other one is unlimited with searching point isdesigned. For the ant colony algorithm used in data-flow model, the four factors which effects the efficiency of ant colony algorithm are discussed respectively in order to seek themost balanced combination of α、β、ρ and m.Finally, by using the two models to optimize some garment examples, the emptycutting paths are reduced to a large extent, so it can be concluded that the two modelsachieve the optimization purposes.