Remaining management for automatic sheet-metal cutting

The Dept. Of Manufacturing Engineering has been developing for the last two years, a CAD/CAM system for automatic sheet-metal cutting processes (oxygen-cut, plasma arc, laser or waterjet), including several modules in relation to geometry preparation, cutting toolpath generation and edition, special developable surfaces for cutting process, etc. The authors describe a new module which deals with the metal remains. The remaining management module allows defining and improving the metal remains made by sheet cutting operations (called offcuts). In order to assure its computer loading and its better improvement (re-use it again), these offcuts are translated into text-files which contains not only its geometry definition but also all its technological parameters such as material, thickness, original stock (base) sheet, original cutting program, perimeter and area, etc. To the offcuts list introduced in the system, one can automatically add new remains with the same original stock sheet parameters (where they come from). The offcuts defined could be rectangular, circular or any polygonal shape. Also they could be edited and deleted. The edition regenerates the offcuts geometry above the piece/s to cut and allows the user to test whether its useful or not. The offcuts management allows searching the best offcuts which are useful to cut some pieces again by material, thickness and size requirements.