PEPS CABINET CUT EXPERT IS HERE AND AFFORDABLE
BRIAN REYNOLDS CABINETS, a member of HIA and a qualified joiner and carpenter company, was looking for a way to improve its efficiency and cut down time from the order to the supply. The company’s MULTICAM router could cut much more if it were provided with NC cutting programs fast and reliably. The available CAD/CAM packages were prohibitively expensive and have not provided customisation to satisfy company’s planning approach and cutting methods. Barry Dyson (STS), the leading CAD/CAM software consultant and supplier, has advised the company to approach CAMTEK PACIFIC. CAMTEK PACIFIC is specialising in the development of highly efficient parametric CAD/CAM applications and it has agreed to undertake the development of Cabinet Cut Expert using BRIAN REYNOLDS CABINETS as a pilot customer.
Says CAMTEK PACIFIC “Our PEPS Knowledge Based Expert CAD/CAM engine allows us to undertake the development accordingly to the customer’s specification very efficiently which results in the affordable cost of the new and powerful NC/CNC programming tool”.
All parts used by the company are parametrised and have in the system dialogs for graphic user interface and design and cutting routines based on the parameters. All parameters have standard (default) values.
The cut list has all parts identified by the unit they belong to and the  part’s type. Only the part’s length and width and non standard parameters are provided explicitly, rest is taken as defaults from the system’s data base. All parts are automatically designed from the data in a cut list. They can be generated anew, edited or deleted as required
Accordingly to the cut list’s material data and parts quantities the nesting module creates layouts on material sheets providing required gaps between parts and rectangular cut offs which allow to use unused parts of sheets later.
Using customer’s machining methods Cabinet Cut Expert resolves all machining operations and for every layout it is sorting and grouping operations by stages and tools into the optimised machining procedure for the layout as the whole.
From machining and geometry data CAMTEK PACIFIC generates for each layout NC program in the format required by the NC machine tool. 100% correspondence of NC program is guaranteed.
The system is covering all requirements of the cabinet & kitchen woodworking. The wide variety of architraves is provided with correspondent sets of parameters to cater for standard and special form cutters. The new cross sections can be easily provided by the change of parameters or by introduction of new types of architraves with correspondent parameters, tools involved and cutting methods.
The system provides the instant design and development of the machining procedure for various stairs. By defining the stair step and rise sizes and number of steps in a section the stair is defined, displayed and cut. By adjusting optional parameters the stair can be modified to provide for special requirements. The pair is placed back-to-back and machined as one.
The system includes a turret maintenance. All company tools are registered in a data base and have pre assigned positions in a turret. If the machine tool has limited capacity of automatic tool changer and the station is already engaged the system issues a warning to the operator and provides necessary instructions for a manual tool change.
The system has been installed at BRIAN REYNOLDS CABINETS in April 2005. Says the company’s managing director Brian Reynolds “ The system has been used since the day one. The learning could not be easier as the system is doing for us exactly what we have used to do only instead of hours in minutes. The unavoidable human mistakes completely eliminated and generated NC programs are going direct to our router. Machine’s down time has disappeared. The only time the machine is not cutting is when ready parts are removed and the next sheet is loaded. The next NC program is loaded and is waiting for the button ‘Start’ to be pressed”.
With Cabinet Cut Expert the company acquired a very powerful and universal PEPS CAD/CAM system. Says Brian Reynolds “The cost of the system is one third of the systems we were looking at. I believe the system will pay for itself within 10-12 months. And one more advantage of the system is that, being CAD/CAM system, it will run any new NC/CNC machine in a company with minimum outlay”.
The system was demonstrated and has generated a live interest during the National Manufacturing Week at AUSTECH
 

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