Mitchell Mill reduces cutting time by 74% with ProNest LT

Company overview

Mitchell Mill Systems is a manufacturer of material handling equipment used in grain, fertilizer, animal feed, food processing, and industrial applications. The company also fabricates a variety of specialty equipment to meet customer needs when standard products are not available on the market. Mitchell Mill is recognized for its extensive design, fabrication, and installation expertise. The company’s product offering includes conveyor systems, bucket elevators, screw conveyors, and drag conveyors.

Project manager Jeff Johnson, who works out of the Missouri, USA location, oversees the company’s cutting operation, which includes a mechanized plasma cutting table.

Challenge: Company-wide lean project requires increased cutting efficiency

At the time, Mitchell Mill was working on a company-wide lean project. Management tasked Johnson with cutting time, material, and labor from the operation. Johnson needed to find a way to improve efficiency in the cutting process, and Hypertherm’s ProNest® LT nesting software had recently been released.

Solution: ProNest LT delivers professional-grade nesting, increasing efficiency

To fulfill management’s lean objectives, Johnson and his team decided to trial Hypertherm’s ProNest LT nesting software. ProNest LT is a professional-grade nesting program created for light industrial cutting operations. It provides many of the same features as Hypertherm’s ProNest nesting software at a lower cost.

ProNest LT

ProNest LT is a powerful CAD/CAM part nesting software designed for light industrial, mechanized cutting in production environments. ProNest LT provides professional-grade cut quality at an affordable price and is delivered in an easy-to-learn package that comes with unlimited technical support.

ProNest LT provides a single software solution for all conventional plasma, waterjet, and oxyfuel cutting machines, with powerful, high-yield nesting that reduces material costs and increases profitability. It helps fabricators and manufacturers increase material savings, boost productivity, lower operating costs, and improve part quality by offering the highest level of cutting expertise.

ProNest LT is incredibly easy to learn and use, with intuitive screens and a wide variety of helpful features. Optimized nesting strategies enable operators to nest jobs more quickly and efficiently. Operators can import CAD files, artwork, and signs, or create their own designs using powerful built-in tools.

The ProNest LT’s faster, fully automated interface reduces programming time from hours to minutes, while specialized cutting techniques can reduce total cut time by up to 50%. Hypertherm’s built-in expertise ensures the best possible cutting parameters are applied for each job’s unique needs, resulting in sharper corners, cleaner edges, and improved hole quality.

ProNest LT also provides advanced features such as advanced part design and development, CAD/CAM import and conversion, interactive manual nesting, detailed reporting, and simplified costing. ProNest LT also comes with unlimited access to software training, ensuring all ProNest LT operators are fully versed in the software’s features. All software updates are free, so all ProNest LT users have access to the most current version of the software.

Business impact: ProNest LT increases efficiency and delivers better cut quality

After starting their free trial of ProNest LT, Johnson and his team decided to do a time study comparing it to their old software. They discovered that using ProNest LT nesting software cut nesting time by over nine minutes, a 74% reduction in nesting time, enabling them to complete a job from drawing to finished program in just three minutes.

When the Mitchel Mill team discovered that using the ProNest LT cut nesting time by over nine minutes, they did some calculations. With a calculated time savings of 9 ¼ minutes per nest and 550 nests per year, the total labor savings were calculated to be about 85 hours per year. With labor costs at $75 per hour, the labor savings alone equated to $6,375 per year.

Another, perhaps bigger, advantage of using ProNest LT’s high-quality cutting software is how the software optimizes the cut quality of the job. Nesting with ProNest LT ensures that users are getting the most out of their cutting machine.

Mitchell Mill found this out in dramatic fashion when cutting a custom part for one of their customers. The customer required 7,000 holes in half-inch mild steel (pictured above). Doing this job with Mitchel Mill’s old software running their plasma system, the company was forced to ream every hole as a secondary process because of the amount of taper on the cuts.

Using ProNest LT’s more advanced cutting techniques, including variable feed rate and the ability to lock down torch height control, the holes now come out virtually taper-free, and Mitchel Mill has been able to eliminate secondary operations on almost all of their parts. Johnson explains, “The quality with ProNest LT is incredible compared to what we were getting before on the same cutting equipment.”

Learn how ProNest LT nesting software can help your business improve cut quality, efficiency, and material utilization. Click the button below, fill out the form, and a Hypertherm product expert will contact you.