Shrinkage Management levels

The purpose of shrinkage management is to prevent parts becoming too small in welding. Shrinkage compensation is applied by increasing or decreasing the size of the parts, and it can be defined in three directions; length, breadth, and height. Usually shrinkage compensation is applied to parts in length and/or in breadth direction.

Shrinkage Management has the following levels:

• Overall level
• Manual level
• Automatic level

A special case of shrinkage management is compensating for the shortening of the plate when a face plate is welded on it. See Plate Deformation Compensation for more information.

Overall level

This level affects all parts within the entire block. Shrinkage at this level can be controlled in System Management > Production > Plate Cutting Data > Extra Length/Shrinkage with the Shrinking Compensation setting. With this setting you can define the shrinkage factors for all the directions (length, breadth, and height). All the parts to be coded will be compensated by the factors set here.

Manual level

Manual Shrinkage Compensation overrides the overall level and applies compensation only to the selected part(s), with the given factors.

Automatic level

Automatic shrinkage compensation overrides the overall level, and in some cases it can override the manual level compensation. Automatic compensation is controlled by several settings, and depending on these settings the system gives all parts a compensation factor.