HVAC jobs are complex with many parts, each of which can consist of many components – some bought and some made in house. Traditionally these manufactured parts are developed and then cut out by hand – a process both time consuming and requiring specialist knowledge. In this day fewer people have this knowledge – one of the reasons many companies are moving to CNC machines.
A CNC machine can do the work of a number of people. For a quality machine the biggest determinant of its usefulness is the software used to run it as without good software the output of the machine will be severely limited.
It is not uncommon for a business to buy third party software after their machine is installed in order to increase the effectiveness of their significant investment in plant.
The job flow characteristically follows the following process. The job might come to the programmer as a list of parts. Once these are added into the job their components are nested. Each part is broken down into its components and the software uses an algorithm to try to fit these parts into the lowest number of sheets of material – giving best sheet utilization and lowest material cost. The only person who will be unhappy about this is your scrap agent!
Having generated the nests the software then creates identification printouts and labels. This means you can cut a large number of parts from different jobs and different customers without the confusion of wondering what goes with what.
The software interfaces with any brand of plasma, oxyfuel, laser, router or waterjet cutting machine. Whatever machine(s) you have the front end of the software is always the same.
