Industry
Tubular Steel Products, Custom Fabrication, Design Services
Production
- Laser – Bystronic, LVD
- Uni-Punch – Rouselle, Uni-Notch
- Punch – Rouselle, Federal
- Turret Punch Press – Murata, Strippit
- Press Brake (Bystronic)
Inefficient Nesting
Sheet metal nesting at A.W. Mercer (Boyerton, PA) was a growing problem. Because nested parts did not efficiently utilize material, engineers were forced to spend an inordinate amount of time manually overriding nests to reduce scrap.
In Enter SigmaNEST – Exit Waste
2011 the switch was made to SigmaNEST. The software’s advanced nesting algorithms delivered measurable results.
- Nesting time was reduced by 70% or more
- Manual intervention was eliminated
- Thousands of hours of engineering time were freed up per year
In Enter SigmaNEST – Exit Waste
2011 the switch was made to SigmaNEST. The software’s advanced nesting algorithms delivered measurable results.
What’s Different?
SigmaNEST offered a number of advantages over the previous system. Those critical to the customer included:
- In addition to intuitively combining parts more efficiently on the sheets to minimize web size, SigmaNEST better recognizes part features or openings where other parts can be nested.
- SigmaNEST stores information on unique part requirements such as grain direction – an important parameter with stainless steel. If there is a need to nest these critical parts in one specific orientation, SigmaNEST handles this quickly and effectively.
A Fast ROI
“We had to set up and develop a large order for an HVAC railcar project that comprised some 400 unique part numbers, all cut from seven different combinations of material type and thickness,” recalls General Manager, Tim Meade. “Nesting one complete batch of parts with our previous software laid out the job on 265 sheets. It took 40 man-hours from our engineering team to whittle that down to 200 sheets.
``Now using SigmaNEST we lay out the job on 200 sheets in about 8 hours allowing our engineers to focus on more productive tasks.”
Tim Meade,
General Manager
General Manager