nesting software

As a manufacturer of trailers for agricultural, scrap, and general industrial applications, Maurer Manufacturing was in the midst of a very busy time in the company's history. In fact, the company replaced its older plasma cutting machine with a new one from Alltra Corp. in November 2006 in an effort to keep up with increased production orders. The table, which came with a 168- by 192-inch cutting table and a Hypertherm HPR260 power supply, was able to keep tolerances of at least 0.030 in. The new plasma cutter was a nice complement to the company's Cincinnati Incorporated CL-707 laser cutting machine, which had a dual-pallet setup, both 72 in. by 144 in. in size, and could reach speeds of up to 8,500 inches per minute.

The cutting tolerances that the new plasma table could achieve actually allowed some family of parts to be cut on either table. Unfortunately, the company's newfound flexibility in cutting plate—mostly 16-gauge up to 5⁄8 in. thick—was plagued by the reality of having to carry two nesting systems, the one that came with the Cincinnati laser cutting machine and the one for the Alltra plasma cutter.

Nesting Software

"The Cincinnati software that we had before was good because it was designed specifically for Cincinnati," said John Tatman, Maurer's production manager. "But we wanted one single software. We were changing over people at the same time, and it was just so much easier to have someone come in and learn one software. And our engineering department could learn one software, instead of having to learn two packages."

For a company that didn't have a lot of time to waste in keeping up with production needs over its two 10-hour-shift, six-day workweek, Maurer Manufacturing didn't see a lot of value in having people sit through additional software training if they didn't need to.

What You See …
All nesting is done offline at Maurer Manufacturing. Because the shop floor works off a weekly production schedule, nests are prepared the week before the jobs are scheduled to hit the shop floor. Tatman estimated that about 25 percent of the nests are standard for popular trailer offerings, while the other 75 percent are unique nests that rely on the software's dynamic nesting capabilities to position the parts efficiently.

So the ability to create master programs for standard nests was an important requirement for new nesting software, as well as the ability to work with more than one brand of metal cutting machine. Maurer managers thought they had both of those requirements covered after witnessing their first demonstration from an independent software vendor.

Three months later, however, they discovered that wasn't the case. What Tatman and his team witnessed in the demonstration couldn't be duplicated at the factory.

The software that was demonstrated did provide basic plasma cutting functionality, but did not provide advanced features, such as feed rate reduction to achieve small holes with reduced taper, autoheight control lockout, and control of the auto gas console. The software also experienced some difficulty producing NC code for the laser.