Gosport-based HC Coils, which manufactures heat-exchanger components, used to rely on a simple CAM system that was purchased alongside its Nisshinbo HQ1250 and HQ1250HS presses, but there were a number of issues.

Drawing-office manager John Yeomanson says: “The interface was very poor and appeared to be DOS-based, even in 2010. There was no automatic nesting, so I had to employ someone to lay up nests all day, which is a mundane job for a relatively highly paid member of staff. Support was also very poor, with questions often going unanswered.”

After researching the market for nesting systems, HC Coils purchased Jetcam Expert Premium with free-form nesting, along with Jetcam Orders Controller for easy and remote ordering of parts (www.jetcam.com).

“Jetcam had all the functionality that we needed, and it was relatively inexpensive.” There were several thousand components that needed to be imported into Jetcam, but this presented little problem, thanks to Single Component Automatic Processing.

Two years after implementing Jetcam, HC Coils decided to replace both of its punch presses with an Amada EM 2510 punch press with sheet loader. The company simply purchased a replacement post-processor, which was installed in one day.

Mr Yeomanson sums up: “With the savings in programming time alone, the Jetcam system paid for itself easily within a couple of months. We simply would not be able to manufacture the amount of products we are making now with the previous system.”