I currently have an assembly of a cabinet face frame parts. I have created them via use of the weldments profile tool.
Is there a way I can take these pieces and organize them on a stock material size in such a way as to give me the most efficient use of material?
This would be used on a cut list sheet so that the operator would know they would be able to get parts A, B, and C off of stock material D.
Make sense?
Thanks for the help, and input.
Do a search here for "nesting". Quite a few Discussions will turn up.
Glenn - Will do. Thanks for the response. I wasn't too sure on what to call it.
What you are referring to is a "Nest" function, this is typically a tool outside of SW.
something like Romac or Cutlogic, there are many more. simple Excel formulas could be used for smaller jobs.
the closest you can get it in Sw is to sort by Shape.
Andreas - I tried searching the "sort by shape" function with no luck.
Where is this function located.
Thanks,
not sure what you use in your BOM to the describe the Shape, by default it puts it in to "Description"
Understood. Thanks for the input.
download 1D cut optimizer for free, best way to do it, even gives you a pictorial cut list
To me figuring this should seem to be common sense. Then again I do this all the time when I get the bug to make something at home. I pull up weldments and come up with something that the little lady wants and then send her to the store to get what we need. Sometimes there is stuff laying around the garage that is available and then plans get modified to fit what is there. Depending on the cost of material it is always good to have extra and it should be up to the cutter to decide the most efficient way to do things not the designers and drafters. Being part of the team does not mean that we have to tell them every step to take and hold their hand threw each process of building something.
David i agree 110%, but we often get guys who will waste 16-24 inches of extruded aluminum that is $30 a foot, to them it is just scrap. I put it in a cut optimizer and have 4in of total drop compared to their 5 or 6 feet of combined drop.
Sebastyon Champion wrote:
David i agree 110%, but we often get guys who will waste 16-24 inches of extruded aluminum that is $30 a foot, to them it is just scrap. I put it in a cut optimizer and have 4in of total drop compared to their 5 or 6 feet of combined drop.
why do guys that do this still working there?
Not sure what the labor market is like where you are but top quality employees aren't always an option in my area.
I have been told to dumb down my drawings because the guys on the floor don't understand things like weld symbols or standard 3 view drawings.
i have to do the same thing, even go as far as putting arrows and the word "top", as well as engrave job numbers so they don't mix up job parts.
Yes! Hitting home for me so much right now..
Yep! We are a contract fab company. We have to take every customer drawing and simplify it for our production employees. Add iso views, convert metric to inch, simplify GDT, etc...
Our argument has always been if they won't/can't read the first three views, an isometric view isn't going to help much. And it doesn't...simple brackets are still formed backwards way more often then you'd think.
because that is local environment, not much selection here as far as intelligent employees go, and i work for a small company so higher paying large companies get the "good" employees and we get lesser trained.
I am in the same boat here...it is a struggle for sure!
Very true. But then again, if you have in house production, more and more production employees need to be spoon-fed it seems..Even if you don't look at it as spoon feeding it is nice to have best practices standardized and documented.
I can see both arguments.
I completely agree David
I spent quite a bit of time developing a spreadsheet to add on extra material in a smart a way as I could. This involves adding both length, width and thickness, based upon the size of the component. Say 1mm extra thickness per 350mm length and 0.3mm per 100 width. I also specified custom properties for flat, straight, wobbly or Max which adapts the rules. After a bit of tinkering the numbers coming out were pretty close to my experience.
I have never fully implemented it though. The main reason was to avoid doubling up these additions by myself and the joiner. Whoever is cutting the wood needs to know the exact finish size and add on their own allowances and combine various components as they proceed to get the best out. Often it's so tight that every millimeter counts.
I considered using it for costing and ordering of materials, but it gives the same answer as our rule of thumb anyway - 100% waste
That being said however, we are a small outfit, I have no doubt that we could make more efficient use of our resources by automating more.
I keep dreaming we'll get there one day.
I had a visit to uPVC window manufacturer and saw the waste bin from their cross cutter. All of the offcuts were absolutely miniscule. A whole days cut list was optimised,,, for me an amazing sight to see
I found this UK based company after some searching.
A couple of limitations, but seems to be a pretty cool product.
Thanks everyone for your input.
This is a very good question. I want to see what others do to minimize material waste, especially with a weldment.
In the past at home when I make something from something like plywood, I'd create a separate assembly and lay the pieces out on the plywood, spaced the kerf width of my saw blade apart and try to minimize effort and wasted wood.
However, at work we don't actually make the parts here. So, I haven't explored this area too much.