Optimal Dissection of the Raw Material
Fraunhofer ITWM
The basic raw material for the production of colored gemstone is mined. However, the obtained material cannot be processed directly to precious stones. Rather, defects like cracks and inclusions must be removed. This usually happens by dissecting the raw material into several parts in such a way, that the defects are as close to the boundary of the parts as possible. The unmachined parts are then the basis for the actual cutting. The dissection is currently done by manual sawing. This project has two goals: On the one hand we want to calculate partitionings in such a way, that as few as possible material is to be removed from the stone when further processing. On the other hand we like to confer existing water jet technology to the dissection of gemstone raw material and to automate the resulting process.
From the mechanical point of view the challenges are to derive physical models of the water jet and the handling of the raw material. From the mathematical point of view the sticking point is the modeling of the so called “developable surfaces”, which describe the cut resulting from the water jet, and the development of appropriate methods for solving the arising optimization problems.
