With Lantek Expert nesting technology, utilizing remnants of sheet material can deliver worthwhile cost savings. The CAD/CAM nesting software is able to model the way in which each company works with remnants, and establish rules from this, to intelligently manage their handling and use.

The use of remnants is not always a clear cut decision, as cost of material, extra handling, the size of components being manufactured, the technology of the cutting machine itself and traceability requirements all need to be considered. Complications can arise with identification of remnants, building up a stock of unused remnants which are costly to store and interaction with the users existing production planning and MRP systems, which need to consider the use of remnants.

With Lantek Expert, sheet metal companies can link to MRP systems to dynamically nest parts with the same material specification, as they are required. For remnants, the software can suggest the use of these before starting to nest in a new sheet. For many applications, it is able to reuse the remnant straight away on the following batch of parts to minimise handling. If this is not practical, it can look at stored remnants before considering a new sheet according to the methodology preferred by the customer. Where the remnant has to be stored before reuse, part of the process can include laser marking to enable identification and tracking of the material. The marking can reference the original sheet or it can utilize user-defined references.

To optimize the use of remnants, Lantek Expert nesting is able to define in the software different strategies to automate the cutting and generation of a desired remnant by both the sheet orientation and by adjusting the shape of the remnant to suit the parts, whether rectangular or irregularly shaped.

Additionally, there are parameters to generate remnants with different levels of irregularity depending on the nesting of parts. Even auxiliary elements such as lead-ins / lead-outs are considered, enabling it take advantage of unused material in apertures, depending on their area to maximize utilization.

By using the intelligent remnant handling in Lantek Expert it is possible to evaluate the savings that can be made by considering each company's individual situation including factors such as component types, material cost and cost of storage to arrive at an optimized solution.