20 October, 2021Lantek, a multinational leader in the development and marketing of CAD-CAM/MES/ERP solutions and a pioneer in the digital transformation of sheet metal industry companies, presents the new features and improvements in the latest version of their software - Lantek Global Release 2021.
Lantek’s Global Release 2021 firmly continues the company’s commitment to offer its customers and distributors the most advanced and flexible solutions for the sheet metal market, while increasing their efficiency and profitability along the path to digital transformation.
The 2021 version is the result of 35 years of experience on Lanek’s 35th anniversary. “35 years in software is a long time. Many years learning about customers’ processes, their idiosyncrasies, work flows and the various machines and technologies. The 2021 version is the result of 35 years of experience and we are proud of its launch”, stated Carlos García, CTO of Lantek.
Lantek Expert
The new features for importing CAD models in Lantek Expert include drag & drop functions and detection of duplicate parts, making part data importing much simpler and quicker. The software is capable of importing 3D models such as assemblies and part sets from practically all the CAD systems on the market. In addition, the Assembly Nesting importer can display all the sheet metal parts of the model, depending on the folding tool that is used, to compose a 2D shape ready for nesting and cutting. Likewise, the new Draft Parts management functions allow marking of parts that need an additional design approval before they are manufactured, while the new Clean Cut technology can be applied to contours where entries or micro joints should not be placed, preventing imperfections in the final cut.
The new Expand Nesting option allows the programmer to make the most of unused sheet metal space to increase the space between parts evenly. The advantages are greater rigidity of the skeleton remaining after the cut, improved removal of parts during cutting and less probability of collisions, fewer areas affected by the heat and better skeleton balancing for crane removal.
The new Spiral Cut function for cutting holes, destroys the material inside the hole so it falls onto the machine bed. This prevents collisions and the need to remove the scrap material by hand. It also achieves a more gentle and faster cut, free of sharp edges and with fewer cutting start cycles.
Other manufacturing improvements among the 25 that have been added include the following: improved material lead-in and lead-out positions, automatic sizing of leftover material, new micro joint processing, skeleton destruction options, customisation of import windows and improvements to cost calculations.
Lantek Flex3D
The tube machining market is undergoing steady growth, as is the number of new machines, devices and technologies designed to cut tubular parts. Lantek Release 2021 has been prepared for these industry demands.
The new Toolpath Smart Designer can manage importing and machining of any profile geometry, even the most irregular shapes, prepared to cut any complex tube shape. This feature can also be used for regular profiles, increasing user flexibility for efficient cutting of parts.
The Steelwork module for the design of steel parts has been completely revamped to create a streamlined shared user interface experience for all machine technologies and a new 64-bit architecture that has reduced programming time by approximately 15%.
Moreover, the automatic nesting motor has been improved, thereby increasing material savings up to 5% and time savings by 28%, in addition to other precise manual adjustment capabilities, various scrap removal options, dividing parts to reduce scrap generation and the selection of beam load angles.
Other improvements have been included to meet market demands for new machining strategies and devices, such as the rapid cutting of hole areas by using a zigzag machining path and better positioning of lead-ins, a machine support with two X axis heads or three moving supports, as well as other general features such as acceleration management to calculate machining times and the file drag & drop function during the import process.
Lantek MES and Lantek Integra
Lantek MES and Lantek Integra are in charge of managing the workshop and tracking resource loads, orders, delivery dates, stock quality and levels, maintaining traceability and the necessary flexibility to be able to react to changing circumstances.
This flexibility is improved by real-time integration of machine control with Lantek WOS Opentalk. This achieves greater power and reliability, by automatic reporting of the work being carried out in the machine. Work load monitoring improvements facilitate programming and load monitoring, enabling accurate predictions for offer and sale order delivery times, taking into consideration current work loads, estimated execution times, buffer times and predefined delays for each operation.
Improved integration of Lantek MES and Lantek Integra with Lantek Flex3D provides more options to import CAD 3D data (STEP, IGES, SAT). These changes enhance the system’s capacity to generate estimates even more.
Lantek has made significant improvements to the appearance of the program to meet current user experience standards. The new dark mode enhances visual ergonomics, reducing eye fatigue and adjusting the screen to real light conditions, increasing user comfort at night and in dark environments.
Lantek Analytics
Lantek has spent several years working on cloud-based applications and considers these the future of software. Lantek has made a significant effort to develop SaaS services in the cloud. This not only makes the software accessible from anywhere 24 hours a day, but it also eliminates the cost of hardware, offers flexible capacity and makes upgrades and new software applications easy to implement, thereby drastically reducing ownership costs.
The Global Release 2021 is the launch of the first SaaS (Software as a Service) application by Lantek Analytics. This intelligent business application captures significant data each day. It can be accessed by any device at any time to see what is happening in the factory with the help of more than 70 KPIs and 10 filters. It has never been so easy to see your business data clearly, all of it grouped by significant KPIs.
As part of its development, Lantek Analytics includes 8 new KPIs, the dark mode, improved control panel and filter management and self-service functions.
The 8 new KPIs: Machine Standby Reasons, OTIF (On Time In Full Delivery), WIP (Work In Process), Wait Time, Wait Time Progress, Transport Cost, Transport Cost Deviation, Return Orders, will open new and valuable business prospects.
An improvement in the Control Panel now allows control panels and control panel groups to be created and duplicated and control panels to be marked as favourites. The improvement to Filter Management allows the user to edit and delete filter combinations and save them with a name so they can be applied later with a single click.
The Self-service function can be used for trouble-free creation of new KPIs. A simple wizard guides the user step-by-step through the process, in which more than 150 predefined measurements and more than 50 filters can be selected.
In line with other Lantek products, Analytics also has a dark mode option that greatly reduces visual fatigue and sharpens colours.
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