Programming for evaluating strip layout of progressive dies

Abstract

A progressive die is an effective tool for efficient and economical production of sheet metal parts in large quantities. Nowadays, progressive die designers still spend much of their time on choosing better layouts among feasible ones. This study employs Pro/Web.Link, Hyper Text Markup Language (HTML) and JavaScript to develop an application which helps evaluate automatically strip layouts in Pro/Engineer software environment. This paper proposes solutions for calculating total evaluation score of the strip layout based on four factors: station number factor, moment balancing factor, strip stability factor and feed height factor.