Optimal Blank Nesting Using Simulated Annealing

By reducing scrap, high volume stamped parts can be produced more economically. Scrap rate is heavily influenced by the nesting, or positioning, of the blanks onto the stock. Blank nesting is often done manually, resulting in inefficient nestings with high scrap rates. We have developed an automated nesting system which minimizes the scrap for continuous strip stamping processes. Using an integer grid technique, we compute the overlap between blanks and then apply simulated annealing, a probabilistic global optimization technique, to determine a new nesting with zero overlap and minimal scrap. We present several examples to illustrate the method.