How NX + Python allowed LOUIS to reduce its use of wood by reusing its scraps.
"At LOUIS, no two millings are alike. For those of you who don't know us, we produce customizable furniture in quality wood, locally.
Producing locally with quality material means using the raw material in the best possible way. It is out of the question to throw away any piece of wood that could be used.
A typical day of machining at LOUIS contains a good portion of parts with completely different dimensions than the day before. Impossible to reuse the previous day's files, a nesting of the parts in our available wood plate formats is required daily.
How does it work in practice?
To optimize material usage, we wrote code in Python to link NX to a high-performance automated nesting solution. The result? An automatic and flexible workflow.
NX and ISO files are generated automatically without locking the machining preparation into a black box. The CNC operator remains in control. For example, it regularly happens that our CNC operator repositions certain parts in NX to avoid knots or pellets on a wooden plate. This results in a visually stunning pattern.
But the nesting has its limits and every day the machinings produce scraps of wood with complex shapes. To simplify their management and reuse, we wrote an NX+Python algorithm that analyzes each machining plate, determines if rectangular offcuts are possible and automatically produces 2D contouring operations to produce these offcuts.
Yes, but then what happens ?
These scraps are then listed by our CNC operator in a software list... and automatically reused during the next nesting. It's a virtuous circle that allows us to maximize the use of raw material while having a simple and efficient management.
It took us over a year to get the nesting and scrap reuse process right.
The result? A 3-fold reduction in discarded wood waste, thus a gain in production costs and a reduction in emissions linked to the transportation of dumpsters by truck.
"Our next goal: Implement a process with a local organization to donate all scraps that reside more than 2 months in our inventory and are too small to be attractive during nesting."
Next week in an article dedicated to NX + MKE (Machining Knowledge Editor) you will discover how to generate 100% automatic toolpaths for shapes with very variable dimensions !
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