Hole Drilling Route Optimization in Printed Circuit Boards Using Far-to-Near Metaheuristics

Abstract

Drilling holes in Printed Circuit Board (PCB) is usually realized by Computer Numerical Controlled Machine (CNCM). In fact, affecting an optimal shortest drilling holes route for the CNCM will improve its processing time and inevitably its efficiency. This paper presents a new metaheuristic named Far-to-Near (FtN) in order to optimize the shortest drilling holes route in PCB. The generated solution will be used as an execution plan for robotic arm in CNCM. Several numerical applications illustrate the performance of the proposed metaheuristic FtN in order to generate the shortest drilling route and also to find the optimal circuit when changing the position of the initial starting position of the robotic arm.