The business cost for profile cutting on machines has been and still is primarily driven by Front End Time, Material Utilisation and Sequence Optimisation. The industry has been and still is adopting leaner manufacturing practices by reducing batch size in favor of more frequent delivery dates which in turn places higher demands on suppliers to be more flexible with quicker turn around (Sound Familiar)?

“Investment?”

Investment in more modern and flexible machines helps significantly but a key supporting tool to achieve this is a CAD CAM system with not just dynamic nesting capabilities but software that can integrate into the business throughout many processes and provide a complete solution based on your business needs and requirements.

 “So we have our goal but what other pitfalls are there?”

Often overlooked areas such as: What are the process steps required to make CAD files?

• Do we draw?
• Do we import?
• Do we need additional (OLE) tools to convert CAD formats?

What is the viability of nesting parts together?

• What are the material grain constraints?
• What is the possibility of turret tool capacity limitations?
• Do we have enough demand to fully fill sheets?

 “So what should we look for to improve?”

Depending on your manufacturing facility and size this can vary but as a general rule of thumb.

• Machine Support (2D and 3D)
  • Adding CAD CAM Software with all the bells and whistles is great, but if the software can’t support a good variety of machines where will this leave you in the future?
• CAD Capabilities
  • Most CAD CAM software has a variety of options and support levels but more often than not this is achieved through OLE or 3^rd party based conversion, which usually requires additional seats of CAD packages or can cause costly front end delay and possible revision control problems.
• Business System Linkage
  • How do we get orders into the system? What is the time spent manually entering production orders against possible human error with retyping?
• Nesting
  • What types of nesting are supported?
  • How easy is it to generate a nest?
  • How long does it take to process a nest?
• Usability
  • Most recognized CAD CAM software’s can provide a range of solutions but how many of these solutions are actually designed, developed and more importantly owned by the respective supplier? Does each module have a different look and feel?

We at Metamation provide not just a solid range of complete CAD CAM Modules, but a range of modules that can be integrated as and when your business needs require. Our core modules (2D CAD, 3D CAD, Offline Bending, Tooling and Nesting) have been designed by us from the ground up, giving the end users a truly seamless and easy to use environment to work in. We support multiple machine brands and models both from general support to OEM relationships.