PEP Nesting Shop Floor Lasers

How does PEP save material over other nesting products? Material yield is a function of a programmer’s time in regard to his chosen CAM software. As discussed previously, PEP creates great nests in one minute that seldom require editing of any kind. When the PEP automatic nesting results are benchmarked against a skilled programmer with 20 min. to create nests, the PEP material savings is typically 6 percent. The percentage varies according to the amount of time the programmer spends setting parameters, re-nesting and editing the automatic results. It should be noted that when a single programmer is responsible for converting customers’ CAD files, scaling and fixing the parts, verifying the CAD file to the converted part, and then nesting for two lasers, the PEP material savings are closer to 12 percent. When the PEP automation is run against another CAM product’s fully automatic mode, the material savings is typically 12 to 20 percent. The savings vary according to the type of parts being nested. It should be noted that Daimler/ Freightliner and Hi-Tec Profiles both had five programmers prior to purchasing PEP to create nests for their lasers. In addition to the material and machine savings, both companies were able to do all the programming with a single PEP programmer. Can PEP automatically create common cut nests for parts with notches and radiused corners? “Common cutting,”which is the practice of nesting parts to share common edges, is totally automatic with PEP regardless of notches, radiused corners, tapers and part size. The software does the analysis and categorizing, the nesting of common cut parts at the kerf, the sequencing and the development of the common cut path – and it does all of it automatically. Figure 1. The majority of savings realized by Daimler/ Freightliner after upgrading to PEP Technology were primarily found via material and time savings. 39 January/February 2018 More than a dozen critical CAM processes must be done 100 percent of the time. If the programmer is not doing all of them, then a laser runs 20 to 40 percent slower. 7% 45% 48% Material Savings Machine Savings Engineering and Programming Savings $100K DAIMLER ROI $1.5 MILLION Saved/Year $680K $720K