In many manufacturing processes, once a project has been configured to the customer’s specifications, the next job is to set up the sheet or panel cutting lists. This article recommends a professional panel cutting software solution to manufacturing businesses, details some of the key benefits, and presents specialist features to make the process even more effective.
Although seemingly straightforward, panel cutting can be a long and tedious task to optimize positioning of parts onto sheet material and decide how you going to cut.
This task is complicated further when it becomes necessary to take to account additional panel cutting optimisation parameters like…
- Trim cuts
- Turnaround time
- Total cut line lengths
…and a whole series of other elements that will affect the decisions you make when performing panel optimization.
This of course is where panel optimizer software can not only save material waste, but also be a great time saver.
Introducing OptiCut, our industrial level panel cutting optimization software
As you’d expect from a professional solution, it is possible to set up parameters like trim cuts, turnarounds, grain direction, edging, cut length and costings, but it also comes with a whole series of top level and micro optimization algorithms that will enable you to adjust your panel cutting optimizations exactly according to your priorities.
This means that you will not only save hugely on material costs, but you can also put a priority on panel cutting time by minimising panel manipulation (turnaround), or you can adjust priority on machine cut lengths which would minimise wear on the cutting tools.
Flexible Enough to Accommodate Your Priorities
Depending on your particular industry, and the material you are cutting as well as the machines and tools are used for cutting certain priorities can be set up to save you time and money on one particular aspect of this operation against another.
For instance, if you are cutting material that requires a diamond cutter that is very expensive and you want to minimise the number of tool changes, you can modify OptiCut’s algorithm to minimize total Length in priority over material waste.
Equally, if the material itself is of lower value relative to the time needed to cut, you can minimize the number of turnarounds to reduce cutting time with increased waste. Of course, if you are cutting expensive material, the opposite would be true and you would increase the number of turnarounds to save more material.
A further refinement that is possible is to balance optimization processing time versus wastage. The better the optimization, the longer it takes to process. Depending on your circumstances, this processing down time can be costly, so you can reduce it if you feel the increased waste is justified.
The adaptability of Opticut makes it the ideal choice for intensive industrial applications where panel cutting optimization must go far beyond simply organising cutting plans to minimise waste.
If you’d like to test out our software, you can download OptiCut here.
