Laser cutter reduces material waste through programming/nesting software

Jeffersonville, IN - Interroll Automation LLC manufactures engineered-to-order material handling systems. Until 2007, the company outsourced all of their sheet metal laser cut components, but decided to purchase a CNC laser machine to bring the operations in-house because of the increasing volume of work, the ability to improve lead times, and the desire to improve the quality of the finished part to its customers.

The company purchased a Han Kwang 3015 CNC laser, which was supplied with Jetcam Expert 1 that allowed the company to automatically import and apply tooling to CAD files. Later, Interroll Automation decided to automate their nesting processes and purchased Jetcam’s Free-Form High Performance nesting module to produce highly optimized dynamically generated nests and updated to the latest version of Jetcam Expert.

A number of benefits resulted. The time taken to apply profiling information and create nests were each reduced by two man hours per day, with a 10% saving over previously created nests. The functional Jetcam menu system reduces the time to perform functions such as setting up machine tech tables and to tool/nest parts so a surge in orders can be quickly tooled and nested.

JETCAM Expert is also supplied with a custom report writer so the operator can identify and tag parts as they come off the machine. Material savings were made due to the speed and ease at which nests could now be created. And despite the creation of more remnants, Interroll was able to manage this efficiently due to the built-in remnant sheet management

Interroll saw a return on investment on its upgrade in just four months through material and time savings.