Page 29 - MetalForming-Feb-2018-issue

FABRICATION
Nesting Software
Keeps Pace with Metalformers’ Needs
Upgrades at two European manufacturers improve run times, reduce waste and increase efficiencies.
BY JOE JANCSURAK, ASSOCIATE EDITOR
What began decades ago— shortly after the use of com- puter numerical control (CNC) for cutting machines and per- sonal computers became prevalent industrywide—is now a major factor contributing to increasing material and operating efficiencies by sheetmetal fabricators worldwide. It’s nesting soft- ware, and in some ways, metalforming and nesting are evolving together throughout the world.
Take for example, Teistungen, Ger- many-based Ribo Blechbearbeitung GmbH, a manufacturer of made-to- order retail outfitting products such as food carts and display systems, which committed to nesting in 2001 when the majority of its business was large volumes of single parts. The company used single-component automatic pro- cessing and nesting software features from Jetcam International s.a.r.l., Mona- co, to automatically tool and nest parts.
Since then, Ribo has benefitted from several Jetcam software enhancements, including the 2009 addition of rem- nant-sheet management, allowing Ribo to add all of its remnants into the mate- rial-stock database automatically, for easy identification and reuse. Common cutting and punching also has helped to reduce material waste while opti- mizing machine runtime, enabling Ribo to run two shifts instead of three to meet production requirements.
Over time, Ribo’s business has become more diverse, says Raik Klinge- biel, CNC programmer for the compa- ny. “We changed from series produc- tion to small volumes and even one-offs of complex components. As a result, we needed to find a way to program more parts quickly and to nest dissimilar parts to mix orders.”
Finding Efficient Nest Patterns
In 2011, Ribo purchased Jetcam’s free-form high-performance nesting
Common-line cutting and punching helped reduce material waste while improving machine runtime to 20 percent for Ribo Blechbearbeitung, a German manufacturer of food carts and display systems.
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