June 2008 Edition

CAD/CAM software

Autonesting saves time

Machine company makes waves with Jetcam driving waterjet cutter

Wagner Machine Co. of Champaign, IL, wanted its Omax 2652 waterjet cutter to autonest to save time that was spent manually creating part nests in CAD and exporting them.

Wagner provides precision CNC machine services spanning a wide variety of cutting technologies. The company purchased an Omax 2652 Waterjet cutter, which has a maximum cutting table of 26" x 52". The supplied CAM software was capable of automatic nesting of simple components, but did not have the ability to automatically perform dissimilar part nesting.

"Initially, the software supplied with the machine met our needs, but as the business grew, we found that we were spending several hours a day nesting," says Kurt Wagner, project manager. "As we could not autonest, we were creating nests in our CAD software manually and exporting a complete DXF nest for the CAM system to program. This worked well initially, but was very time consuming."

Wagner concludes that they required automatic nesting, especially with the planned purchase of the larger 55100 Omax waterjet.

"We researched the CAM market, with price and service being our initial considerations," he says. "At that time, we did not look at Jetcam. Of the systems we did test, none of them could come close to the nests that we could generate manually. Last year we purchased the 55100, and Omax suggested that we evaluate Jetcam."

Wagner sent Omax’s U.S. partner NestOne Solutions a series of DXF components for a planned job and requested a benchmark comparison.

"I e-mailed the DXFs to NestOne and received the comparison back in about 30 minutes — the same nest was taking us two to three hours to do manually, as complicated nests require more efficient nesting," he says. "I could immediately see that the nest was substantially better than my own. I’d estimated that I would need three sheets but the Jetcam nest only required 1 and 1/3. NestOne even provided the DXF nest, which I could then use to cut the nest."

Wagner purchased Jetcam Expert along with Jetcam’s Free Form High Performance Nesting module. Installation was performed in the morning, with training taking the remainder of the day.

"We were pretty much up and running after the afternoon’s training and were immediately able to create nests and accurate NC code," Wagner says. "With any software product you always wonder if you are going to get hung out to dry after you buy the product, but the after sales support from NestOne has been excellent." A knock-on effect of a reduction in material waste is that fewer sheets are required. As each sheet can take 15-20 minutes to load and unload, this further maximizes the throughput of each machine and operator.

Since purchasing Jetcam Expert, not only has Wagner reduced its programming time and material utilization, but it has also increased the flexibility of both machines.

"When we initially looked at nesting, price was our biggest consideration," Wagner says. "After seeing the efficiency of Jetcam, it was a non-issue, especially as the cost in comparison to anything that came close was competitive.

"Jetcam will pay for itself within six to12 months based on material savings alone, but it has given us greater capacity on the 2652 waterjet and freed up staff. We can now program, nest and cut the parts in the same time that it took just to program and nest them before, often saving three hours per day."

Jetcam International

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