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A s composites molders prepare to take their place in the "part per minute" automotive industry and other fast- paced industrial sectors, automation is the key weapon, and production bottlenecks are the enemy. Among the latter, one of the most troublesome is the time-, labor- and waste-intensive process of cutting and kitting reinforcement materials. "Compared to 10 years ago, today, there are more composites production facilities, more industrial parts being produced and tighter part tolerances and specifcations," says Elizabeth McGrud- er, marketing manager at Eastman Machine Co. (Bufalo, N.Y.), one of more than a dozen machinery suppliers that have ofered automated fatbed cutting systems to composite manufacturers for decades. "Manual cutting," she contends, "is no longer viable." Te good news, says Jonathan Palmer, the chief technology of- fcer at Autometrix Inc. (Grass Valley, Calif.), is that automated cutting — in a part-per-minute or a part-per-day scenario — need not be prohibitively expensive. One recent aerospace customer, he contends, "recouped their investment in less than 12 months, based on time and labor savings, and employee satisfaction has improved, since hand-cutting has been eliminated — what used to take hours now takes minutes," he notes. NESTING AND CUTTING SOFTWARE IMPROVE SPEED AND UTILIZATION Although production speed is critical, an overriding concern is the high cost of composite materials, particularly carbon fabrics and prepregs. Part cost in manufacturing is directly related to mate- rial waste and cut-ply identifcation and organization. Two of the greatest tools that cutting systems suppliers bring to the task, there- fore, are nesting and kitting programs resident in the sofware that drives the cutters. "We look at the need behind the customer's need, and solve business and process problems," says Paul Epperson, VP of manufacturing sales at Lectra (Smyrna, Ga.). Nesting sofware automatically arranges part shapes over the material expanse in a way that minimizes waste, a complex task that, manually done, could consume days. "Automated nesting sof- ware enables manufacturers to combine several jobs and nest parts using multiple algorithms to fnd the highest material utilization, while still controlling ply placement within the nest to ensure ac- curate fber orientation and integrity," explains Gerber Technology's (Tolland, Conn.) director of industrial product management Tom Gordon. Gerber's ComposiNest sofware enables a customer to nest multiple jobs from the same material, providing a greater choice Software/hardware advances and peripheral equipment make flatbed cutters essential to automated production scenarios. Automated CUTTING ACCELERATES Source (both photos) | Zünd 3 2 C O M P O S I T E S W O R L D . C O M FEATURE: Cutting & Kitting Update 0614CT CuttKitt-OK.indd 32 5/20/2014 8:48:21 AM