Aeronaut Automated Cutters by Industry

We'd be nothing without our customers and the incredible products they make. Most of them feel the same way about Aeronaut!  

This page shows some of the key industry segments served by Aeronaut. If you don't see your own industry segment here and you want to know what automated cutting systems might work for you, then email or call us and we talk it over.

Window Furnishings

Interior or exterior, from café curtains to hurricane screens, roller shades to romans, awnings and umbrellas, Aeronaut has the complete solution for factory automation from rapid pattern design to cut and seal.

Tension Structures

Tension membrane structures, textile roofs and shade sails need accurate, wide-span flatbed cutters which is Aeronaut's speciality and why you'll find products cut on our machines all over the world. 

Aerospace

From spacesuits to MLI and Mars lander parachutes, Aeronaut has supplied special-purpose machines for Aerospace and defence industries including blade, laser and ultrasonic cut and seal machines.

Canvas & PVC

Aeronaut cutters are used extensively in technical and recreational textile work. Camper vans, camper trailers, bags, seats, tents, swags, gym equipment, circus tents, marquees and all sorts of other products are made with the help of Aeronaut cutters. 

Inflatables

Aeronaut cutters are used extensively in technical and recreational textile work. Camper vans, camper trailers, bags, seats, tents, swags, gym equipment, circus tents, marquees and all sorts of other products are made with the help of Aeronaut cutters. 

Sailmaking & Marine

Aeronaut started with sailmaking and it's an industry we know well. So it is no surprise that Aeronaut cutters are used for making woven, laminated and membrane or string sails as well as boat covers, bikinis and boom covers. 

Parachutes & Hang gliders

Parachutes, paragliders, and gliders and lightweight aircraft is an industry area where Aeronaut laser cutters have a big presence. Where all-round edge sealing and accurate cutting are essential, a flatbed  laser cutter is the best tool for the job.

Leather & Upholstery

Aeronaut developed a low cost leather cutting system almost two decades ago and it's evolved into a very powerful system for cutting leather and upholstery products mainly due to Aeronaut's brilliant SiliconEye machine vision system for hide and pattern scanning and interactive nesting.

Shade Structures

Cutting shade cloth normally involves a fairly large cutting table but most businesses who make shade structures also manufacture some more precision products from less stretchy material.

Packaging

Parachutes, paragliders, and gliders and lightweight aircraft is an industry area where Aeronaut laser cutters have a big presence. Where all-round edge sealing and accurate cutting are essential, a flatbed  laser cutter is the best tool for the job.

Special Garments

Spacesuits, racing suits, emergency workers clothing etc. they all require specialised patterning, marking and cutting outside the scope of normal garment work. Aeronaut has a range of equipment just right for this work.

Pool Liners & Covers

Pool liners and covers are another specialised industry where Aeronaut supplies cutters and other equipment for rapid pattern development from tools to measure a pattern, CAD plugins for parametric patterning and of course cutters.

For more industry specific information, see the links under the Industries menu above or contact Aeronaut Sales for help with your application whether it's unique or mainstream.

What is the cost of an Aeronaut automated cutting system?

Perhaps this is not the question you should be asking!

This is a question we all have asked and in most ways, it is the wrong question. Anyway, the answer is this.

If you have a n people working on cutting x number of patterns per shift, then the cutter will pay for itself. End of story. Yes, you will have to find a way of paying for it to be made and installed but beyond that, the labour savings will cover the cost of the cutting system.

The number of customers who don't make their cutting system pay for itself, often in under 18 months and sometimes in under a year, is vanishingly small… under 1%.

On the other hand, customers who report doubling their turnover, tripling their staff numbers, reducing mistakes, reducing stress are too numerous to mention. 

In almost all cases, cutting is something a machine can do very well, reliably and quickly. Whatever you pay your staff, you're better off getting them to do something machines are not good at!

How can I justify the cost of a cutting system?

Waste fabric will almost always cost you far more per year than a cutter and good autonesting. With moderately expensive fabric and a moderate workflow, many customers will save well over $100 every hour on fabric. 

A big blind maker told Aeronaut that they'd saved over $10 million since installing their cutters. Another claimed making $570 per hour off the table. Another said the payback was well under a year. We have dozens of stories like that and 35% of all machine sales are repeat orders.

Reduced mistakes are another strong point for automation. Mistakes are far more expensive than the fabric they're made from.

Checking a nested queue of patterns so that you only order the required length of fabric is another advantage.

Making a lot more marks on patterns can improved the welding, sewing or gluing processes to the point where pieces just fit together. 

Increase Productivity

Reduce Waste

Reduce Mistakes

The Essential Tools for Your Industry

Nesting and Control

Aeronaut's Tangent software is the key to reducing fabric waste and Tangent's powerful and user friendly cutter control is essential to increase production. 

Autonesting

Fast and efficient autonesting can pay for a cutting system in months if your fabric is expensive - and isn't waste fabric the most expensive fabric in your business? 

Rapid Patterning

Aeronaut has developed rapid patterning software and CAD plugins to reduce the design to cut time down to a few minutes on complex patterns.

Autotracing Patterns

Aeronaut's revolutionary SiliconEye machine vision software can accurately trace and digitise a table full of patterns in seconds. SiliconEye makes nesting into irregular shapes like leather hides or scraps an easy job.

Aligning Patterns

With Aeronaut's full-table SiliconEye or Cyclops gantry mounted machine vision systems, positioning patterns on the cutting table or aligning cut profiles to patterned fabric or digitally printed material is quick and simple.

Inkjet Printing

Inkjet printing is the fastest way to do pattern numbers, markings and detailed reference text on almost any fabric, especially soft, coarse textured  and woven materials.

Why Automate?

Most of the benefits of automation are obvious, others less so.

  • Automation will increase productivity without increasing staff numbers while at the same time reducing waste, mistakes and staff stress at busy times.
  • If you don't want growth, automation can let you produce the same number of good quality products with fewer staff.
  • Automation reduces your reliability on key workers and conventional skills while attracting another generation of workers who might be entirely happy with computers but less so pushing a pair of scissors.
  • Automation adds value to a business since the IP, designs and patterns are all digitised and can be stored off-site.
  • Cutting accurate patterns no longer depends on key workers. Aeronaut cutter are easy to operate so many people can run a cutter and saved jobs can be easily  recut.
  • Automation means you can do more markings and more markings means faster, more accurate and more reliable assembly. The cutting and marking process may take a while longer but the sewing, welding or bonding operations are much faster.

Why Aeronaut?

  • Apart from the obvious reason that Aeronaut has some of the best people around in sales, design, software and support…
  • Aeronaut cutters are legendarily reliable. We've got dozens of cutters over 20 years old which are still doing the same reliable job for their owners.
  • The cost of ownership of an Aeronaut cutter is very low. Upgrades, spares and service are readily available even for 30 year old machines.
  • Over a third of new machine orders are from customers who already own at least one Aeronaut cutter, something which applies across the board from NASA contractors to the boat cover maker down the road.
  • Aeronaut's cutters are rationally designed machines. As one customer said, "if we'd bought another make of cutter, we'd have spent more on plastic covers than we did on our whole machine".
  • Aeronaut cutters may be overbuilt, like a '70s Mercedes and there's a sense of security in knowing that your 3 metre wide cutter is also working somewhere else at 6 metres wide.
  • If it's yellow, it doesn't break! 90% of components are made in-house on one of 5 CNC machines, most of which are German 5 axis machining centres. If we made it once, we can make it again.

Contact Aeronaut

Get the facts from the factory direct. If you want advice on automated cutting, an offer on a complete cutting system or to arrange a demonstration, just ask!

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Aeronaut Automation

4-6 Tepko Road,

Terrey Hills,

New South Wales 2084

Australia.

 

Hours: 8:00 - 17:00 Australian Eastern Standard Time

 

Tel: +612 9450 0800

Sales: Sales@Aeronaut.org

Admin: Admin@Aeronaut.org

Support: Support@Aeronaut.org

Tech: Tech@Aeronaut.org