Adisa

Automatic Nesting and Cutting System

Henk Peters, researcher and developer

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See also: Adisa Systems B.V.

other nesting examples

Introduction

The ADISA system is a system for automatic nesting and cutting of leather shoe parts. It is designed as a production system and consist of a basic hardware and software configuration, designed to be integrated with CAD systems and if present, with Production Management Systems (PMS).

As the starting process in shoe production, it is the first step to a production without dies/tools in any department.

Opportunities/Benefits

The opportunities for this system are:

  1. Increased flexibility, quick response to market needs, small series production and a possibility to optimise production models afterwards.
  2. Better material utilisation by about 5%.
  3. Avoiding die costs.
  4. Savings on labour costs depending on the type of production.
  5. Controlled quality.

Systems overview

The ADISA system covers the basic functions: marking, detection, nesting, cutting and parts removal. The system integrates hardware components like a digitizing system, scanner and cutting table with software components like nesting, image processing etc.

The system needs input information from the order management (PMS) and pattern (CAD) systems. The process of automatic nesting and cutting of leather can be divided in several steps.

Figure 1 shows a schematic overview of these stages and how they interact.

Figure 1. Schematic overview of the cutting process steps and its environment.

Interfacing

A standard Production Management System interface is available. Adaption to the interface is simple, but customer specific.

For acquiring pattern data, an interface with a CAD system based on DXF file is available. Other type of interfaces can be customised for specific CAD-systems. These CAD-systems must be able to expand the geometric data of the patterns with information about quality requirements, definition of stretching directions and size marking positions.

Pre-processing

The patterns from the CAD-system should all be prepared once before cutting. This is necessary when non default values are used. In this process additional information to the patterns like tolerances to stretching directions can be defined. The basic information for this process is derived from CAD data of graded patterns. The pattern pre-processing software imports DXF files from a CAD system.

Before a production cycle can start, a cutting order must be available. Such a cutting order consist of information about which patterns, in which sizes on which material have to be cut. The information can be imported from a PMS or can be entered manually. A cutting order in general can consist of patterns of more than one style, which means that more styles can be cut from one skin at the same time. This can lead to significant material savings.

 

Production steps

 

Marking

The first stage in the production cycle is the marking of the defects of the skin. This is carried out manually by the operator by means of digitising defects and quality areas on the skin (see pictures below). Different types of marking can be made for different types of defects. The defects are digitised on a large digitising tablet while a projection system provides visual feedback of markings. Large skins can be digitised in multiple sections. After marking, if necessary the skin can be temporarily stocked before further processing. The manual marking process gives the system flexibility accompanied with controlled quality.

  

Detection

In this stage, the skin is scanned by means of a high-resolution colour camera, while positioned on the final cutting position (on the cutting table). Through data processing of the scanned image, the contour of the skin is calculated and the previously marked defects and other information are matched on the skin. The colour camera allows to simply adapt to different colours of leather.

Nesting

In this stage, using the information of the skin (contour, defects, quality zones, stretch directions), information of the patterns and information of production orders, fully automated nesting (NAICE) is carried out. Nesting supports multiple localised stretching directions and 4 levels of quality areas. The nesting resolution is set at 0,5 mm. NAICE is faster then the cutter, so the cutting table has full production. The pictures below show an example of the nesting. The colours on the patterns indicate the quality areas (high to low quality = red, blue, green, grey). The markings of the skin are also shown. The defects are shown as slashed areas in corresponding colours. F.i. the blue defects may be used in the green and grey areas of a shoepart, but not in the red or blue areas. The highest quality is shown as an red line on the skin.

 

Cutting

After a part is nested on the final position on the skin, the cutter automatically cuts the parts and provides it with defined size markings, stitch marking and punches. The cutting process runs, initially with a small delay, parallel to the nesting process.

Removal

After the skin is completely cut, the operator has to remove these cut parts. This is carried out manually, but is supported by computer. The system is provided with a sorting table, were for each shoe size a sorting position is available with indicator lights and buttons. The operator can select the size he wants to pick and the corresponding shoe parts on the skin are automatically enlightened by the projection system. For large skins, the shoe parts can be removed in multiple sections.

 

System design

The system is designed in such a way that the production cycle time is optimised for one operator. For this reason manual operations like marking defects and removing parts can be carried out parallel to automatic operations like nesting and cutting. Also nesting and cutting are carried out synchronously with only minimal delay between nesting and cutting of a certain shoe part.

From a hardware view, system can be divided in several components. Figure 2 gives a schematic view of the hardware configuration. The pictures below show the system as a whole.

Figure 2. The hardware configuration of the ADISA system.

Digitizing tablet.

  • A large size digitizing tablet for marking of defects.

    • Cutter

  • A large size cutting table for cutting, punching and size marking.

    • Sorting table.

  • Two large size table to remove and sort cut parts (only one table shown).

    • VGA-Projector

  • A projection system for feedback during marking and enlightening during removing.

    • Camera

  • A high resolution colour camera for scanning of the skin. (Not shown on photos !)
    •

    Conveyor system; for transportation of the skins.

    Computers; for controlling hardware components and processing.

     

      

     

     

     

    Performance specifications

    The performance of the system is very much depending on the specific production setting. However global figures can be given.

    Typical performance example:

     

    Hardware specifications

     

    Lower cost configurations

    Zünd LC2400 configuration

    A lower cost configuration is available. This configuration is based on a Zünd LC2400 cutting table. The system uses no separate digitizer and no detection system.The contour and faults are marked using the coordinate system of two projectors.The configuration is equal to the Nestor Pro system of Torielli. The productivity of the LC2400 increases 50% to 100% with Adisa software, when compared with interactive nesting software.

    See also http://www.torielli.com/eng/part_z.htm

     

    Costing software

    The smallest software only configuration is the Adisa costing system. It is still a full featured nesting system, giving you the possibility of real world cost gathering. It is still possible to combine orders into one batch. It will show f.i. that a batch of a mixture of sizes and/or models is cheaper in material use than seperate ones. Costs in other parts of the factory however can increase a bit, such as those related to production time.

     

     

    More info

    The Adisa system interfaces with Shoemaster, Procam and Autocad CAD systems.

    The automatic nesting software (NAICE) can be tuned for:

    leather shoes, leather goods, furniture, garment and several other industries.

    For more information, you can e-mail me at h.peters@adisasystems.com

     

    MORE NESTINGS

     

     

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    Adisa - Automatic Detection Nesting and Cutting System. Automatically nests and cuts shoe parts from leather skins. Higher Efficiency, Higher Speed and better quality. Adisa Systems B.V. automatic nesting and cutting system contains computer software for nesting parts. It is an automatic nesting and 2-dimensional optimize system to minimize waste. The automatic cutting system uses full automatic nesting of shoe parts to 2D optimise the material. The software is also used for bin packing and cutting stock problems in garment and textile for automotive furniture. The software is used to optimize a leather hide, sometimes also called automatic marking or marker making. It can be used in combination with a knife cutter, a laser cutter or a water jet cutter. The algorithm is much faster then the artificial life or simulated annealing algorithms. Nofit polygon based algorithms are much slower and worse when a lot of pieces, a lot of nonregular shapes, a lot of vertices or multiple orientations are involved. This nesting method handles multiple material quality requirements for a part and multiple stretch directions. Each part can be assigned a separate orientation tolerance. A part is defined in a CAD-system. The software interfaces with dxf files. The nesting system is especially suited for the leather shoe, leather goods and furniture industry. The system outperfoms its competitors in automatic marker making for the the apparel and textile industries. The software is also available as a costing system. So the system is more then leather cutting software only, or a leather cutter only.

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