A Novel Approach to Optimize Numerical Control Codes Using a Systematic Block Management Method

The numerical control (NC) codes generated from Computer Aided Manufacturing (CAM) software follow the sequence of adding elements to the design. As an alternative, it would be quite beneficial in cost-reduction to optimize the manufacturing sequence to minimize the run time. Accordingly, this paper introduces a novel approach to optimize the numerical control codes generated from a CAM software package using a systematic block management method. To improve the drilling sequence, contours are also considered as block entities in a traveling salesman problem (TSP) with modifications to systematically manage the blocks of code that define the contours. A MATLAB program was created to automatically optimize the numerical codes from a CAM software translator. Because of easier usage and good performance, a partitioned approach for the λ-opt algorithm was implemented instead of the Lin-Kernighan Heuristic (LKH) that has been extensively proven to be effective in optimizing the traveling salesman problem. The new approach was simulated on sample designs and has been shown to achieve at least 15.52% reduction in airtime and 11.32% reduction in tool travel distance. Experimental data showed a 13.45% decrease in total milling time.