The Dude
Hot Rolled
- Joined
- Oct 19, 2010
- Location
- Portland, OR
Trying to improve a nesting situation on a CNC router that processes 1/2" to 3/4" OSB and plywood. There is no vacuum table being used (due to often cutting multi-layer sheets so the upper sheets wouldn't hold) or micro-tabbing (yes, might be a solution but trying to evaluate others). Currently, only static nesting is used but hoping to move towards dynamic nesting (yes, could still be multi-sheet). The main issue is that small scrap pieces (say around 1" wide and a few inches long) can get sucked up into the spindle vacuum (cools the spindle, pulls up mostly dust & chips). Once they are sucked up, they can eventually shut down the air flow and, worst case, start a fire.
With static nesting, they can do a one-time programming to spindle cut the chunks. Works "pretty good" but takes more spindle time and won't work for dynamic nesting (too much evaluation, reprogramming effort). We talked to two companies, both of whom say they can't recognize scrap and cut it up with the spindle automatically (sheet by sheet processing). I'm having a little bit of an issue believing this as I'm pretty sure that lasers and other cutters need to carefully process sheets where scrap can potentially tilt up on a cutting grid. Just to be clear, this is perimeter scrap (between parts), not internal cutouts (those could be an issue as well but they don't have much of that) or small parts (they don't cut really small parts).
Can anyone verify if there is a nesting program that can recognize small cutouts/scrap and "chew them up" as part of the process. Ideally this is where the length or width is below a certainly value. Just to be clear, I do know there are some other options like micro-tabbing, vacuum sheet hold down, etc. but ideally would like to stay away from these (there are other issues those will cause).
Hope I explained this well enough, thanks for any inputs/advice.
The Dude
With static nesting, they can do a one-time programming to spindle cut the chunks. Works "pretty good" but takes more spindle time and won't work for dynamic nesting (too much evaluation, reprogramming effort). We talked to two companies, both of whom say they can't recognize scrap and cut it up with the spindle automatically (sheet by sheet processing). I'm having a little bit of an issue believing this as I'm pretty sure that lasers and other cutters need to carefully process sheets where scrap can potentially tilt up on a cutting grid. Just to be clear, this is perimeter scrap (between parts), not internal cutouts (those could be an issue as well but they don't have much of that) or small parts (they don't cut really small parts).
Can anyone verify if there is a nesting program that can recognize small cutouts/scrap and "chew them up" as part of the process. Ideally this is where the length or width is below a certainly value. Just to be clear, I do know there are some other options like micro-tabbing, vacuum sheet hold down, etc. but ideally would like to stay away from these (there are other issues those will cause).
Hope I explained this well enough, thanks for any inputs/advice.
The Dude
