This optimizer takes your cutting list and your stock lengths, including the offcuts already lying around, and works out a plan that fits the pieces with as little waste as it can. It accounts for the saw kerf, which quietly eats three or four millimetres on every cut and is the reason a bar that should take exactly five pieces takes four.

What This Tool Does

It produces a bar-by-bar cutting plan, a shopping list of how many new stock lengths you actually need, the waste as a percentage, and a list of the reusable leftovers the plan will produce. Offcuts you already have are used before anything new is bought.

Who It Is For

• Workshop owners and welders cutting a job from standard lengths.
• Fabricators quoting work who need to know how many lengths to buy before pricing.
• Anyone with a pile of offcuts who wants to use them up instead of buying new steel.
• Site supervisors checking that a material request is reasonable.

How To Use It

1. List the pieces you need to cut: a name, the cut length, and how many of that length. Add a row per different length.
2. List your stock. Leave the quantity blank for stock you can buy more of, or enter a number if you only have that many.
3. Add any offcuts in the workshop as separate stock rows and mark them as leftover pieces, so the plan uses them first.
4. Set the saw kerf. A cutting disc typically takes two to four millimetres per cut, and setting it to zero will give you a plan that does not fit in practice.
5. Press the button to get the plan, the shopping list and the waste figure.

Inputs And Units Explained

• Piece name and cut length — the finished length you need. Name them something you will recognise on the shop floor, like vertical or top rail.
• Piece quantity — how many of that exact length.
• Stock length and quantity — what you are cutting from. Twenty feet is a common supplier length in Pakistan, but lengths vary, so enter what your supplier actually sells.
• Existing offcut — mark a stock row as an offcut and the plan will consume it before buying new stock.
• Saw kerf — the width of material the blade removes on each cut.

How The Calculation Works

The plan uses a first-fit-decreasing approach: pieces are sorted longest first, then each one is placed in the first bar that still has room for it, allowing for a kerf on every cut after the first. When no open bar fits, a new one is started, taking an offcut if any remain and otherwise a new stock length.

Before planning, the tool checks that no piece is longer than the longest available stock, and says so plainly rather than producing a plan that cannot be cut. It also caps the job size so a mistyped quantity cannot lock up your browser.

First-fit-decreasing is a heuristic. It produces good, practical plans quickly, and the tool says on screen that it is not a mathematically guaranteed optimum. For the sizes of job a workshop actually cuts, the difference is usually nil.

Worked Example

A grill job needs forty two vertical bars at 1,200 mm each, cut from twenty foot lengths, with a 3 mm kerf.

Input or result	Value
Pieces needed	42 at 1,200 mm
Stock length	20 ft (6,096 mm)
Saw kerf	3 mm
Pieces per bar	5, because 5 pieces plus 4 kerfs needs 6,012 mm
Bars required	9
Leftover per full bar	about 84 mm

Nine bars, not the eight and a half that dividing the lengths would suggest, and the reason is the kerf. If the kerf were ignored you would order eight bars and run short halfway through the job.

Features And Benefits

• Offcuts are used before new stock, which is where the real saving is.
• Kerf is accounted for properly, so the plan works on the actual saw.
• A shopping list you can take to the supplier, and a waste percentage you can quote from.
• Impossible jobs are reported clearly rather than silently producing a bad plan.
• CSV export of the cut-by-cut plan for the shop floor.

Assumptions And Accuracy Limits

• The plan is a good heuristic, not a proven optimum.
• Cut lengths are theoretical. Check your first bar against the plan before cutting the whole batch.
• It assumes every piece can come from any stock length of that profile. Mixed profiles need separate runs.
• Angle, taper and mitre cuts are treated as straight lengths; allow for them in your piece lengths.

Common Mistakes To Avoid

• Setting the kerf to zero. It is the most common reason a cutting plan does not survive contact with the saw.
• Forgetting the offcuts. Enter them as stock marked leftover and the plan may well cover the job with no purchase at all.
• Mixing profiles in one run. Plan each section size separately, or the plan will cut a 50 mm tube from a 25 mm bar on paper.
• Cutting the whole batch before checking one. Measure the first bar against the plan, then carry on.

Cutting Steel Bars And Pipes With Less Waste In Pakistan

Steel is sold in fixed stock lengths, so every offcut that is too short to use is money you have already paid for. On a gate, a grill or a shed frame there are dozens of cuts, and the order in which you take them from each length decides how much is left over.

Enter your list of lengths and the stock length your supplier sells, and the optimizer arranges the cuts to waste as little as possible, then gives you a plan you can hand to the person at the saw.

Frequently Asked Questions

Related Free Tools

• Steel Sheet & Plate Cutting OptimizerNest rectangular pieces onto sheets with kerf and margins, and see sheets needed and waste.
• All-in-One Steel, Iron, SS & Aluminium Weight EngineTheoretical weight for pipe, square tube, angle, channel, bar, plate and more — any material, any unit.
• Steel Purchasing & Material BOM DeskCombine sections, sheets and rates into one bill of materials and supplier shopping list.

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