How Do I Use My Falloff (scrap)?

[Adam DAgosto]

Hello everyone,

I have a bunch of scrap from the previous jobs. There is one full sheet of 3/4" walnut + 1 sheet that measures 20"x96" + 2 sheets at 21 3/4" x96".

I'd like to enter that in somehow and tell the program to nest using those pieces.

Is there a way to do this?

Thanks you well in advance (as always)?

Adam

[DanEpps]

The only way to do that in eCabinets is to create new materials with those dimensions then use them in a cabinet. With a Thermwood CNC you could track the leftovers from a job and use them via Rolling Nest, but not in eCabinets.

[Dennis Englert]

If you are operating a Thermwood CNC, you can enter the rectangular dimensions of offall or enter the cooridinates for an irregular shaped offall into Control Nesting. It also lets you enter coordinates for any void areas. You would enter this information just prior to nesting a job that uses that material. It will nest what it can on the offalls that you entered, then continue the nest with full sheets. The offall that you entered is not added to an offall database, so you would only enter "found" offalls when you need to use them.

[DanEpps]

Yeah, what he said. I wasn't sure exactly how it was handled in CN, but I knew that you could use leftovers from previous jobs.

[Dennis Englert]

Using offalls from previous jobs is slightly different. The offall from each sheet is tagged with a label and can be retrieved later for another job via "Add Sheets" by either typing in the UPC code or scanning the bar code. In this case, the operator must select the offall that he/she wants to use when nesting the new job that uses the same material.

[Adam DAgosto]

Okay great, if I create a few pieces in the Materials list that fit the sizes that I have and would like to use, how does eCabinets know to use those pieces on my next job?

Thx.

[Dennis Englert]

The nesting software in eCabinet Systems does not account for "off falls". It only accesses full sheets based upon what is entered in the "Stock Material" library. If you enter an off fall sized sheet into the library, then specify that material for a component(s), then that sheet or off fall would be used. But basically, it does not support off falls in eCabinet Systems. There is no "Off Fall Database". I believe that this technique was mentioned in a previous posting.

"Control Nesting" contains a database of off falls from previous jobs and as described in a posting above rectangular and irregular sized off falls can be entered and used in the current job to be nested.

[Adam DAgosto]

Okay guys, what I'm getting from you is that you CAN do it in eCabinets , but it might not be a "normal" way for the software to think.

Thus far I have entered the new sheets of material, but now I need to know how to tell eCabinets that I want it to use those pieces.

Can you explain the process that I should use to do that? I'm not following your description of the steps I need to use to get this accomplished.

This would be a huge help as always.

Thanks again,

Adam

[Dennis Englert]

From eCabinet Systems:

Create a sheet material in your library for that off fall. In this case it must be rectangular.

Determine which part in a cabinet or cabinets will be able to nest in that off fall, then change the material for that part or parts to the off fall material. You can change the material for that part in the Cabinet Editor or in the "Change Sheet Goods" for Custom Layout or Batch Processing.

Then nest your job.

The parts that you changed should nest in material that you added. Bear in mind, you have to do the math to determine what will fit in that one piece of off fall. If for some reason you change three components to use that material and only two will fit, it will nest that material on a second like sheet, though the sheet really doesn't exist. And if you entered two or more different size off falls of the same material, it would not know that it can continue nesting parts on the other like materials. By definition, it is different, i.e., different name and different size.

Hope you can make some sense out of this. It is not a straight forward method, but should work.

[Iain Hall]

I do basically the same thing just a little different instead of adding sheets to my library and filling it up. I figure what pieces I can cut out of my off falls then filter in the nesting to eliminate those parts. The person I have cutting knows if I say cut Blah blah out of this scrap it is not an issue I guess if I wanted to I could filter out all of the parts except the ones I was going to cut out of scap and get a nested drawing.

There is my 2 cents worth I am now 1.9 cents overdrawn

[Jeremy Schiffer]

I think Iain's method is probably the best practical one. Trying to coerce eCabinets to nest things into leftover sheets would almost certainly waste a lot of time with very little in material savings. A negative net gain.

Here's another method, but it requires you to probably completely change the way you build cabinets: Make your ecabs material database consist of "strips" of material of varying widths, all 8' long. For instance if your upper cabinets have 11 3/4" end panels, tops and decks, then you would have a 11 3/4" x 8' material in your sheet stock library. Continue with base cabs, shelves, drawer boxes, whatever.

Your seed cabinets would then be set to use those particular strips of material for those particular parts. Now when you nest, ecabs will tell you how many of each different width of strip to cut. Rip your 4x8 sheets to those strips.

A "nest" diagram now becomes simply a bunch of crosscuts. It is now very easy to use leftover material, since everything is "nested" linearly into these strips, and all of your leftover material will be these strips.

Sounds complicated, but not too difficult to do. We did it just like this for a couple of years before we got the router. We wasted almost no material.

[Dennis Englert]

That's an interesting approach and makes sense.

I am also not in favor of trying to trick the system in this case.

With the ability at the control, it is certainly a lot easier.

[DanEpps]

I agree, trying to keep up with scrap would be time consuming at best and definitely not worth the effort. If you were to decide to try and do it, I think I would make a couple of "permanent" scrap materials and change the size of them as necessary. Of course this causes a big problem if you forget and use these materials in seed cabinets...

[Adam DAgosto]

I agree, trying to get eCabinets to use falloff is not an easy task.

I ended up just nesting based on full sheets. I then gave it to my builder and said, "here. You figure it out."

He laughed at me, took the paperwork and walked away.

A few hours later, I now have all the parts cut of from the fall off, there's literal a few splinters left over and he took the rest of the day off.

It really helps to have good help!

Thanks guys. Have a nice weekend (just like my builder will).

Oh yeah! Don't forget it's Mother's Day this weekend!!

[Rick Palechuk]

Hi Adam, sheet optimizing software works great for that.