Shared cuts, and a leftover you can still use
- Where two parts meet end to end, the cut is made once. That saves a pierce, a kerf of stock and the whole length of one contour, and on plain square-cut work it is close to half the cutting time.
- The chuck allowances are real. Front margin and dead zone come off the usable length before anything is placed, so the nest is measured against what is left of the stick rather than against the whole of it.
- Slack goes to the tail, in one piece. A long offcut is stock and a scattered one is scrap, so the leftover is racked, priced pro rata and labeled with a barcode and the length it can actually hold.
- It tells you what it left out. Requested, placed, still loading, cannot nest. A nester that cannot say what it dropped is not finished.
10 sectionsround, square, rect, obround, ellipse, triangle, angle, C and U channel, H beam
STEP and IGESa solid is read, the axis found by measurement, the section classified or honestly called free form
Rotary G-codeplus an unrolled DXF, so the job runs even before a controller's post is dialed in
Miters and copescompound miters and saddle cuts generated from three numbers, not drawn by hand
Tube sections Lasertally Nest recognizes
Lasertally Nest classifies ten standard tube and structural sections from the solid itself. A section it cannot match is called free form rather than guessed at, and it still nests.
| Section | Recognized automatically | Nested |
|---|---|---|
| Round tube and pipe | Yes | Yes |
| Square tube | Yes | Yes |
| Rectangular tube | Yes | Yes |
| Obround | Yes | Yes |
| Elliptical | Yes | Yes |
| Triangular | Yes | Yes |
| Angle | Yes | Yes |
| C channel | Yes | Yes |
| U channel | Yes | Yes |
| H beam | Yes | Yes |
| Anything else | Called free form | Yes |
What Lasertally Nest writes for the machine
| Output | For | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Rotary G-code | Tube | Written with the axis word, units and rollover your controller expects. |
| Unrolled DXF | Tube | The whole nest, flattened. Imports into TubesT, CypTube or any CAM package, so a job runs on day one while the G-code post is still being dialed in. |
| Layered DXF | Sheet | Cut geometry on layers, for any CAM package that reads DXF. |
| .zx and .ctds | Not written | Those formats are undocumented. A guessed implementation produces files that open, look plausible and cut wrong, so Lasertally does not write them. |
On your particular machine. You will notice there is no table of machine brands on this page. That is deliberate: I will not publish a compatibility list I have not actually posted to, because a wrong yes in that table costs you a scrapped stick and costs me the account. Email me your controller and I will tell you straight whether the post is dialed in for it, whether it needs work, or whether you should run the unrolled DXF through your existing CAM in the meantime.