Project nesting macro helps commercial kitchen manufacturer overcome design challenge

Situation

U.K.-based Shine Food Machinery has been fabricating sheet metal kitchen components for commercial catering environments for more than 40 years. The company supplies products to customers from small cafes and schools to the Ministry of Defence.

Neil Thorne, senior design engineer, explained the process: “After we’ve won a contract, we’ll design the individual components for the kitchen, such as the extraction systems, tabling, and counters, in SolidWorks®. Once the client approves the design and site dimensions are taken, we then provide the factory floor with manufacturing drawings. The components are nested, laser-cut, folded, welded, and assembled. The finished product is then inspected before being delivered to the site to meet installation dates.”

With each job being completely custom-made, the company manufactures thousands of different components a year, each requiring its own CNC code. For example, a full serving counter can contain 200 different components. The firm uses several programs from Radan—Radraft, Radprofile, and Radnest—to cut every sheet metal product accurately with a Bystronic Bysprint 3015 3-kW laser.

Despite the high level of accuracy and nesting efficiency achieved using these software products, Shine encountered a challenge resulting from design constraints and human error.

“For the aesthetics of our finished installations, we’re governed by grain direction on the sheets. We can’t have neighboring cabinets with the grain going in different directions … the grain all has to go the same way,” said Steffan Owen, design engineer at Shine. “This was a problem for us because when the project was going into Radan, the software was nesting in the best orientation for sheet utilization, and sometimes we didn’t have the correct top face, and the grain was in the wrong direction. We needed to overcome this without having to nest everything manually.”

Resolution

After considerable discussions with Shine, Radan developed a macro specifically to solve this problem.

“With input from the engineers at Shine, we put together a specification that allowed us to put a process known as the ‘F-Stop’ in place, which allows Shine to produce the kitchens with a minimal risk of costly errors,” said Olaf Körner, Radan brand manager.

At the design stage in SolidWorks, a 5-mm letter F is put on the top face of the panel, which indicates the correct grain direction. “Thanks to the macro, when Radan is flat patterning, it determines from the F-Stop which is the top surface and which way the grain has to go,” said Thorne. “Radan then nests with the correct top face and the grain going in the right direction, rather than purely to optimize sheet usage. This is extremely important for the aesthetics of our finished installations. And it stops issues on the factory floor; previously things could be nested either in the wrong orientation or upside down, and even folded the wrong way in the press brake, and had to be scrapped. The amount of scrap we now produce has reduced dramatically.”

Given the success of the F-Stop macro developed for Shine, Radan now is working to include this feature in a future general release of the software.

In addition to solving the surface finish issue, the software also has allowed the company to take days off the flat-patterning process for big contracts. “A school which would have previously taken a few days has taken just 45 minutes,” Owen explained.

Although the volume of scrap produced has been substantially reduced, the software also allows remnants to be optimized. “For offcuts, we use the remnants feature,” Owen said. “Our scrap used to go in the bin, but now every offcut is put back in the system, and the first thing Radan does is to look at a remnant first rather than use a new sheet. That way we’re saving on material as well.”

Using the projects and labeling functions also has increased efficiency. “By using projects we know where everything is, [and] all parts are labeled automatically, which is really crucial for identifying which components are for what job, what the contract is, and what the item number is,” Owen said. “Previously the labels would be handwritten for every part, which was time-consuming—any contract could have well over 1,000 individual parts. Now the labels are printed automatically, and our laser operative simply peels them off and puts them on the part, so every part can be readily identified on the factory floor.”

The increase in efficiency and production rate in the cutting operation has introduced a need for further investment in the factory to stop a current bottleneck at the bending stage. Shine will soon be commissioning a third press brake to handle the increasingly fast rate that the flat components are coming off the laser.

Radan

www.radan.com