• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers
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• v.16 no.4
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• pp.696-706
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• 1992

In sheet metal fabrication using NCT(numerically controlled turret), the automatic tool selection for the NCT operation is the major problem to be solved first to improve its production performance. However, the punching tool selection has been done by human experts either manually or semi-automatically. In this paper, we have introduced the shape-index-set to handle the shape of sheet metal parts and developed an algorithm through which one can find easily the successive matching curves between two curve lists, one from the punching tool and the other from the boundaries of the sheet metal part. Based on this algorithm, we have also devised the method that can select automatically the tools to punch out the boundaries of sheet metal parts. The result of several computational experiments shows the successful tool selection without any fail.