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Remnants: keep, label and reuse sheet-metal offcuts

Nest so the parts finish at one end of the sheet and the leftover is one clean strip; keep strips of 100 mm or more, marked with material, thickness and size, and nest the next job in that material on them first. Hypertherm calls about 70 % material use a typical industry nest, so the 30 % left over is worth planning.

5 min read · Updated · By the Zorocut team
Steps
  1. Let the nest leave one free strip at the end of the last sheet
  2. Put strips of 100 mm or more on the rack with their material, thickness and size
  3. Nest the next job in that material on the remnants first, then on full sheets

Make the offcut usable

A nest that scatters parts over the whole sheet leaves a skeleton; a nest that packs them toward one end leaves a strip you can cut again. Zorocut's nester packs parts toward the sheet's origin corner and reports the free strip to the right of the last part: the full sheet height, from the rightmost part plus the spacing to the sheet's end.

Which strips to keep

  • After an export, Zorocut puts free strips at least 100 mm wide on its remnant rack — our cut-off; narrower strips go to scrap. You can switch this off, or undo it from the notice.
  • Each remnant keeps its material, thickness, size, quantity and the date it was added.
  • A strip only helps if you can find it: write the material, thickness and size on it with a paint marker and store the strips of one material together.

Use them first

  1. With “Nest on remnants of this material and thickness first” switched on, Zorocut places the job on matching remnants before it opens a full sheet.
  2. A remnant used in an exported nest leaves the rack, and the new offcut joins it.
  3. Remnants are rectangles in Zorocut today; an irregular skeleton is not tracked. CypNest, for comparison, can trace remnant paths and even capture a remnant from a photo.

Billing the material

How you bill decides whether the offcut is yours or the customer's. Aston Precision's public estimator bills full sheets at cost; Lapas advises billing full sheets on one-offs. Zorocut offers three modes: the part rectangle plus spacing, the net part area divided by the nest's utilisation, or whole sheets. In the net-area mode a strip you keep is not counted as used, so the customer does not pay for metal that goes back on your rack.

Sources

  1. Hypertherm, What is nesting software?
  2. Aston Precision, Laser Cutting Cost Estimator (feed, pierce and rate tables)
  3. Lapas, How to price a laser cutting job (2026-06-01)
  4. BOCHU, CypNest User Manual (2024V3)

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