Our cutting systems can take advantage of powerful nesting software, both automatic and interactive in order to maximise operators' productivity and optimise material usage.
The software is designed and engineered by String , a software house partner of Atom that has been developing automatic nesting systems for more than 10 years. Besides "traditional" nesting software we are also able to offer our customers "CutWeb", an innovative solution which allows the managment of nesting and cutting via the Internet.
Different Solutions for Different Situations
Automatic nesting software sold together with cutting machinery is often a standardised package, optimised to deal with some specific problems but very often unable to deliver optimal results in different environments nor able to be customised.
Atom does not believe in the "one size fits all" approach, and for this reason we offer several different automatic nesting solutions, optimised for different materials and industries. This is one of the reasons that we talk about "cutting systems", since when you buy a machine from ATOM, we ship our experience, included in the software, along with the cutting machine.
Online Nesting
We talk about "on-line nesting" when this operation is performed directly on the cutting table. Usually this system is used when cutting with oscillating knife machines materials with an irregular contour and that can have defects and different quality areas.
The main stages of on-line nesting are:
- Material deployment on the cutting machine;
- Contour recognition and defects marking (these are optional for interactive nesting);
- Parts nesting, that can be fully automatic, fully manual (interactive) or mixed;
- Starting the cutting.
Contour recognition and defects marking are needed to use the automatic nesting. When nesting in the interactive mode instead these phases can be skipped since the operator decides where to put each part taking into account material features.
The contour recognition is performed automatically using the digital camera and the machine software, while defects marking is done by the operator working directly on the material using a special optical mouse. The machine constantly projects contour and quality areas to make this stage easier and less error prone.
As regards nesting, it is possible to select at any time the automatic, interactive or mixed mode. In interactive mode the operator can position the parts directly on the material using the mouse, having them always clearly projected. The software and the interface are carefully designed to ensure fast and accurate positioning. It is possible, to activate at any time, the automatic nesting, to fill up the remaining space on the material (mixed mode).
Of course it is possible to let the automatic nesting manage the whole layout without placing any part manually. We propose several different nesting algorithms to suit the needs of several industries and maximise the yield on different materials. In any case, our customers can implement custom nesting strategies to support new applications or new production constraints.
Being able to freely choose either manual or automatic nesting you are granted a great degree of flexibility, for example the operator might decide to place manually some especially critical parts or manually optimise some areas of the material, letting the software complete the job.
Off-Line Nesting
Off-line nesting is done in two distinct stages: the defects marking and the deployment of the material on the cutting machine.
It is used mostly when cutting using waterjet based cutting machines. Defect marking can be done using an "Intelliview", that is a special table equipped with a digital camera, projector and software able to recognise the material contour and help the operator in marking quality areas. The data collected using Intelliview is then used by the automatic nesting software, fed by the production orders.
When materials are cut they are deployed on the cutting machine, the proper layout is loaded and the cutting is started. It is critical to use an highly optimised nesting algorithm to maximise material yield. Atom can offer a variety ofl solutions, optimised for several different industries and material types.
Our customers can however ask for custom nesting solutions, fully tailored to support their production requirements
Web Based Automantic Nesting
This is an innovative solution: managing the nesting without having to install new software on your computer, without having to buy licenses for nesting software and without using powerful workstations for the nesting calculation. Everything is done through the Internet.
Cutweb allows you to manage cutting orders from any web-connected PC, the nesting is calculated on our secure servers, always using the most up-to-date version of the software. This service is charged on pay-per-use basis with a transparent and cost effective charging structure.
To find out waht nesting solutions we have for your particular industry, contact us today and talk to one of our sales engineers.