“Software is as important as the machine. You could have the most expensive machine in the world but if you can’t tell it what to do in a matter of minutes, all you’re doing is transferring the labour hours from the factory into the office.”
This is the message from Russell Corlett, managing director of CNC machining centre manufacturer and specialist software developer Masterwood (UK) Ltd. “We look at the industry and any areas where we see labour intensity and develop software programs to handle the work. It’s all to do with saving a massive amount of labour hours: this is what our clients are looking for.”
With the market affected by overseas competition both from the Far East and eastern/central Europe where labour costs are more competitive, UK companies have had to compete through increased efficiency and quality of product and service – and require the best tools to achieve that.
Masterwood claims to be rare among CNC machining centre manufacturers in developing its own software for wood processing rather than relying on third-party packages. Its software designers work closely with the company’s development engineers to deliver innovative Windows-compatible programs, which, says the com-pany, are simple to learn and easy to use.
Recent developments include Master Sliding Sash, which lets users design and produce the three main types of double-hung sliding sash windows, automatically producing a complete cutting list and drawing every component, plus all the machining programs in a matter of minutes; and Master Cabinet, designed to speed up and simplify cabinet design and production.
“There’s definitely been a resurgence of timber windows,” said Mr Corlett, commenting on Master Sliding Sash, “and this software package can cut the time it takes to make a sliding sash by 10 – and that’s being conservative.”
Reducing waste
There’s no question that the UK has seen a demand for more flexible manufacturing technologies in order to produce high volume goods at low cost, along with the ability to manage low volume premium business within the same production process, as Ian Scott, managing director of Alphacam, explained: “A need to reduce costs by minimising wastage of both time and raw materials is resulting in automation wherever possible to improve overall efficiency.”
CAD/CAM specialist Alphacam works closely with customers and machinery manufacturers worldwide to keep track of market trends in order to create the most efficient solutions. It has recently been working with woodworking and panel processing equipment manufacturer SCM to develop a series of CAD/CAM modules specifically for its range of CNC production machines. Dubbed the ‘SCM Pro Series’, the software is designed to maximise the productivity of SCM’s range of routers, machining centres, panel sizing and moulding machines.
The company’s software also addresses the increasingly important issue of waste reduction by helping to batch jobs that result in minimising machine downtime. Nesting routines in some of its products can result in maximising yield from raw material sheets and even reducing wastage on some of the auxiliary processes such as the foil WRAP material, by generating nested lists for those machines as part of a single process. The on-screen simulation function, which enables work to be verified before loading onto a machine, ensures that no valuable production time or material is wasted.
This principle also underpins Weinig’s Mill Vision software, which offers a complete solution where hundreds of different parts must be cross-cut and then further processed on other machines or selected for assembly.
This can present a major logistical problem for manufacturers to avoid losing track of cross-cut pieces, sometimes hardly distinguished in size by eye alone. They often have to work strictly on an order-by-order basis, but this means that a large quantity of wood is lost in the form of unusable residual pieces.
“Mill Vision puts an end to this squandering of resources,” said a company spokesperson. “This software allows users to take product data from customers’ specific programs and to simply change existing order lists into complete cutting lists, at the press of a button.”
In order to optimise the timber yield, similar parts (for example, the same cross-sections, same profiles, same wood type) from different orders can be combined into a single cutting list.
Weinig says a number of customers, in the US, Europe and, more recently, in the UK, with complex cutting patterns are now using Mill Vision with substantial success – and reaching higher productivity and yield levels than previously achieved.
And, as Russell Corlett added, increased productivity with less labour means increased profits. “Every hour we save a company is an hour off their bottom line,” he said.
