• Advanced Manufacturing

SHEET HAPPENS VII: The art of taming stocks of sheet metal: Configuration and good practices

  • Advanced Manufacturing
Today we are looking at how to keep control of sheet metal stocks and remnants. Have you ever felt completely overwhelmed, trying to keep track of all the different sheet sizes and remnants you’ve been adding on the fly? Now, you keep getting a huge selection of sheet sizes options that appear every time you try to use “do all” in the automatic nesting and machining page.

Which cutting technology is the most suited to your plant?

  • Nesting
Thirty years ago, the global distribution of sheet metal cutting machine-tools was dominated by the oxycut variety (large thicknesses) and, to a lesser extent, the plasma variety (small thicknesses). There was a niche for punching machines along with water jet and laser machines. The latter were aimed at thicknesses less than 5mm and were expensive. Since then, the trend has shifted, shrugging oxycut in favor of other technologies according to thicknesses.

The importance of proper plant orchestration to be more competitive

  • Advanced Manufacturing
In an environment where everything is increasingly interconnected and processes are fed from this exchange of data, the orchestration of the systems in a factory is becoming ever more important. This refers to the need to organize, order and coordinate production within the company, a balanced distribution of tasks in which every element must participate and contribute: people, machines and software.