Optimizer; Introduction; How It Works - Alpine ALS 4.0 Manual De Instrucciones

Repetitive, redundant or unnecessary information in
these categories can be eliminated from the message
that is printed.
The columns labeled Start and Length control what
part of the job, truss and piece names are printed. The
information printed on the board will begin with the
character number in the Start column and end with the
character number in the Length column. In the example
above, the printed Job Name will start with the first
character and print up to the 255th character if the Job
Name is that long.
For example, if the full message for Job Name is
"A123456" but the only information that is necessary for
identification is A123, set the Start to 1 and Length to 4.
NOTE
It is important that to print only as much information as is needed.
Very long messages will often not be completely printed on short
pieces as they come out of the machine. Experiment with all these
settings when planning to print more than 15 characters
(spaces count as characters).
1. RESET – Will reset all print Order L-R numbers to 0,
all Start numbers to 0 and all Length numbers to
255.
FLUSH – This button is used to purge ink from the
2.
print head.
These buttons are labeled in Figure 37.
3.8

Optimizer

3.8.1

Introduction

The ALS Optimizer is an innovative software feature
designed to maximize cutting and reduce waste. Using
this feature can result in an 8-10% savings in material
required by the saw to complete the cutting job. As
each plant is run differently, the optimizer is flexible
and can be setup to maximize lumber usage, resulting
in a reduction in waste. This section will outline all the
options available to setup the Optimizer.
Before setting up the Optimizer it is important to
evaluate how lumber is purchased. Linear saws differ
greatly from component saws in the way jobs are cut. A
series of cuts are setup on a board within the software
prior to the stock advancing into the saw. The Optimizer
function will nest cuts together to maximize lumber
usage. Longer lumber stock will accommodate a greater
amount of nesting on each board. This being the case,
Alpine recommends feeding the ALS 4.0 the longest
length of lumber available (see section 1.2). This will
allow the Optimizer to nest more pieces on each board.
3.8.2

How it Works

For a given length of stock, the Optimizer looks through
a cutting file for a combination of pieces that can be cut
from that stock with minimum waste. The computer will
analyze thousands of combinations and return the best
solution in a fraction of a second.
Shown in Figure 38 are examples of cuts made using
Optimizer:
If the pieces shown above were to cut these pieces on
a component saw, an 8' stock would be required for the
7-4-5 piece and a 10' stock would be required for the
8-4-12 piece. The resulting waste would be 2-2-15. By
placing both these pieces on a 16-0-0 stock a waste is
reduced to 0-5-4. A savings of 1-7-9, or 9.1%.
The pieces in the examples above are "nested". They
overlap on the stock. Nesting allows the computer
generated length to be larger than the actual stock
length. After pieces have been nested on the stock, the
computer recalculates the extra material made available
by the nesting process and searches the file again for
additional pieces that can be added to that stock. Many
times the pieces that can be added are fairly short. That
is one reason why the Optimizer yields better lumber
savings if the job contains a mix of short and long pieces.
Figure 39 shows 2 pieces 5-0-0 + 6 pieces 1-0-0 + 1 piece
1-6-0 = 17-6-0 total piece length.
The ALS Optimizer automatically combined all these
pieces and cut them from a single piece of lumber. The
saw was able to cut 17-6-0 worth of pieces from a 12-0-0
stock (as shown in Figure 40).
21
EN
ALS 4.0
P R O D U C T M A N UA L
Figure 38
Figure 39
Figure 40