Racing to ROI with nesting software

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END USER: Trek Bicycle Corp., (920) 478-2191, www.trekbikes.com. CHALLENGE: Improve material yields and speed generation of nesting patterns for carbon fiber composite parts. SOLUTION: CAM software that automatically generates nesting patterns to maximize material yields. SOLUTION PROVIDERS: JetCAM International s.a.r.l., +44 870 760 6469, www.jetcam.com

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Known for its professional race-winning and mass-produced bicycles, Trek Bicycle Corp. manufactures high-end carbon fiber bicycle frames at its Waterloo, Wis., facility. With global demand for (and thus cost of) carbon fiber composite materials increasing, engineers there began investigating ways to streamline nesting of composite parts to be knife cut on the plant’s three Gerber machines.

“We were manually generating static nests,” explained Ben Fisher, product manufacturing engineer. “Static nests could take several hours to create and were often inefficient, depending on the creator and the part shapes.” Therefore, the company looked for a way to decrease nesting time, maximize material yield and possibly generate dynamic nests for daily production. “We could not have done dynamic nesting effectively with the manual nest building method,” Fisher added.

Courtesy of JetCAM International

Nesting software helped Trek increase material yields 5 to 15 percent and automate nesting of carbon fiber composite parts for knife cutting.

After narrowing the field to two finalists, Trek chose CAM software from JetCAM International s.a.r.l., Monaco. The package delivered a good mix of automation and human interaction, and lets users set cutting speed based on the number of layers of composite material to be cut per pattern, Fisher noted.

Claude Drehfal, a Trek manufacturing engineer who also worked on the project, said, “Based on sample nests of common parts, we were able to justify the cost of the software with less than 1-year payback. Also, the JetCAM reseller allowed us to fully evaluate the software to ensure it met our needs.”

That reseller, NestONE Solutions, Duluth, Ga., installed the system and trained five engineers in 1 week. The installation included JetCAM Expert, High-Performance Nesting and Remote Control Processing (RCP), which enabled automatic nesting of orders. JetCAM Orders Controller (JOC) managed parts kits to be nested.

Courtesy of Trek Bicycle

Software automates nesting of frame components for high-end carbon bicycles such as the SpeedConcept 9, which is aimed at triathletes.

The system lets users process nests in batches to determine optimal kit quantities, and allows importation of DXF- and CATIA-generated XML files. It can also interface with Trek’s existing material requirements planning system to provide automated nesting of components needed for that day’s scheduled production, although Fisher said Trek has not yet taken advantage of that capability.

Almost immediately, a number of benefits became apparent. Programming time was virtually eliminated because orders were queued in the JOC program, then passed to RCP for automatic nest processing. The software’s single-component automatic nesting capability is also used to process CAD files, creating geometry and applying profiling automatically.

Now, several programmers remotely access the system through desktop computers, and nesting is automated through RCP. Trek plans to move to dynamic nest generation along with laser kitting at the knife cutting machines, which cut multiple layers of carbon fiber material at speeds up to 40 ips.

Fisher reported that more efficient nesting patterns resulted in material yield increases of 5 to 15 percent on the carbon fiber sheets. The parts are formed in molds into seat tubes, down tubes, chain stays and other components, which are then bound together in a fixture to form a bike frame. “The increased material yield was a quick, ‘hard dollar’ savings,” he said.

Trek achieved a payback in 9 months. Software updates continue to provide Trek engineers with new functionality.