/ 01
The audit
Every program is audited against the source file before it ships: comp side, tab gaps, pierce clear-air — and every cut move checked to lie on the source geometry within five thousandths.
CAM prep for laser job shops
Reads what customers
actually send.
Dirty DXF, DWG, Illustrator .ai, PDF — even a dimensioned drawing sheet or a flattened 3D scan. Kerfmaster heals whatever arrives into true arcs, plans the cut, and proves the G‑code against the source geometry — before the laser ever fires.
- DXF · DWG · AI · PDF
- TRUE G2/G3 ARCS
- AUDIT GATE 0.005″
In development — cutting real production parts today
Accepted formats
The file they send
is the file we read.
Nobody re-draws, and nobody emails the customer for “a clean DXF”. Whatever arrives lands in the same pipeline — heal, QC, leads and tabs, nest, audited post — and leaves it as true G2/G3 arcs, proven against what was sent.
.DXF
The shop native — and usually the dirtiest. Curves exploded into hundreds of tiny lines are healed back into true arcs within tolerance: real corners stay sharp, native arcs are preserved exactly, and a circle is a circle again.
HEALED · KINK-CHECKED · AUDITED
.DWG
Read alongside DXF — same healing, same QC, same audit. “Can you re-export that?” is an email your customer never gets.
SAME PIPELINE · SAME GATES
.AI
Illustrator has no arc primitive — every curve arrives as cubic Béziers. Kerfmaster extracts the true curves and fits real arcs to them, instead of flattening them to segments like generic converters do. Worst fit-induced kink on the benchmark art: 0.008°.
TRUE BÉZIERS IN · TRUE ARCS OUT
.PDF
Vector paths straight to G2/G3 — a step MetaCam-class tools never took. Art files and dimensioned drawing sheets both, read from the same front-end.
VECTOR ART · DRAWING SHEETS
GOT A DRAWING SHEET, NOT A CAD FILE? SEND THE PDF.
Plenty of customers can only export a dimensioned drawing — title block, callouts, center marks, the part buried under annotation. Kerfmaster reads the sheet itself: the outline is reassembled from under the annotation, holes are matched to their center marks, and the drawing scale is proved against the printed dimensions — never assumed. On the latest production test, all 23 printed callouts measured back from the delivered geometry with zero deviation.
FLATTENED FROM A 3D SCAN? SEND IT ANYWAY.
Affordable 3D scanners are filling the industry with flattened scan files, and their curves arrive as splines — which most tools shred into thousands of tiny straight segments. Kerfmaster reads each spline’s true curve and refits it into tangent-continuous arcs instead. From a recent production batch: one customer file arrived carrying 421 splines and 188 ellipses, and every curve posted as a true G2/G3 arc — 4,756 of them in the finished program.
The problem
The hours between the file
and the first pierce.
Customer CAD is dirty: curves exploded into thousands of tiny line segments, open contours, duplicate lines, no units. Cleaning it up by hand eats hours — and what slips through scraps parts: pierce craters on finished edges, tabs on the most visible corner, cut slugs flipping up into the head.
WHAT THEY SEND
one curve · 300 tiny G1 lines
WHAT KERFMASTER POSTS
one true G2 arc
True arcs, never polylines. Exploded curves are re-fit into real G2/G3 arcs — a circle posts as a circle, not 300 tiny lines.
How it works
Six steps. No hand-cleanup.
-
01
File in
DXF, DWG, Illustrator .ai or PDF — the files customers actually send, read as sent.
-
02
Heal
Exploded curves are re-fit into true G2/G3 arcs. A circle becomes a circle again.
-
03
QC
Open contours, duplicate lines and dirty geometry are caught before they reach the machine.
-
04
Leads, tabs, cut order
Pierces placed in clear air, tabs off the visible corners, cut order planned as a safety requirement.
-
05
Nest
Parts placed on the sheet — with the floor packet the shop actually works from.
-
06
Audited G-code out
Every program proven against the source file before it ships. Then the laser fires.
Proof, not promises
Proven against the source.
Not eyeballed.
/ 02
Clear-air pierce
Pierce placement is measured as clear air around the pierce in every direction — keeping the crater and its spatter away from finished metal.
/ 03
Cut order is a safety rule
Never rapid over a freed part still held by a tab. Outer profile always last. Cut order is treated as a safety requirement, not an optimisation.
/ 04
Numbered slug report
Slug retention tabs come from production-validated tables, and every job ships with a numbered slug report — floor feedback comes back by number and tightens the table.
/ 05
The floor packet
One page with every program: nest preview, material usage, parts table, time estimate. What the floor actually works from.
/ 06
Numbers with provenance
Every machine and material value lives in editable tables, each marked measured, decided or assumed. No magic constants buried in code.
/ THE SHOP SHEET
Every claim above, on paper.
This is what the floor gets with a program: pierce clear-air measured in every direction, the slug report, tab spans, cut order — and the audit that proves the posted NC against the source. The floor packet is a real job: the four demo parts above, 24 pieces, nested, posted and audited by the pipeline itself. The concept sheet shows where the format is headed.
SPECIMEN — the packet is program O0104, a demo kit of the parts cutting at the top of this page. Every number on it was computed, not typed.
In production
Not a concept.
A working shop runs it.
Kerfmaster programs are cutting real production parts today — posted, audited, and run on an 80″ × 160″ laser at a working sheet-metal shop. The numbers below are the rules those programs ship under.
0.000in
audit gate — every cut move proven to lie on the source geometry
0.000in
clear air around every pierce, measured in every direction
0.000in
part tab at 14 ga — measured off real shop programs
0decimals
the resolution of everything we hand over — the machine’s own format
We used to spend twenty minutes cleaning a customer file before we could even quote it. Now the dirty DXF goes in and out comes a program I’d swear was drawn in-house.
R. Delgado — owner, precision job shop
The part it cuts is the part they sent. Every program comes with the audit that proves it, block by block — I’ve stopped spot-checking.
M. Kowalski — lead programmer
First software I’ve seen that knows what a loose slug does to a cutting head. The tab tables read like they were written by someone who’s scraped one off the slats.
T. Bishop — laser operator
No invented logos, no fake stars, no “trusted by” wall.
Tipping points
The numbers that decide —
and where they came from.
Under every automatic decision is a measured threshold. These aren’t defaults typed into a config — each one was cut, measured, or learned from a failure, and each lives in an editable table with its provenance beside it.
.75″
Drop-through
A slug under this falls between the bed slats and drops clear — no tab at all, and never a hazard. One size over, it must be held so it can’t tip into the cutting head.
MACHINE · MEASURED
1.10″ · 0.45 in²
The tab gates
A .018″ tab holds a slug up to both limits; exceed either and it takes .033″. Always the smallest tab that holds — a tab is a nub on the customer’s edge, so the only reason to widen it is that the slug would tear a narrow one free.
PRODUCTION CUT · MEASURED
.150″
Clear air, not lead length
Pierce standoff is measured around the pierce in every direction — not as distance travelled along the lead. A full-length lead running parallel to a wall still puts the crater 25 thou from finished metal. That failure is why this rule exists.
SHOP FLOOR · DECIDED
.002″
Sag decides, not radius
An arc too large for the control isn’t judged by radius. The same 14,000″-radius arc is honestly a straight line on a 1″ part and a visible flat on a 120″ one — so it posts as the fewest chords whose sag stays under two thou.
RULING · 2026-08-13
Ø.300″
Where the rule can’t be met
A hole under this can’t give a pierce .150″ of air anywhere on its edge. So the pierce takes the point farthest from any metal — the centre — and the job report says so before the shop finds out. It’s exactly what an operator does by hand.
SHOP PRACTICE · MEASURED
4:30
Where the cut starts
Tab, start point and pierce are one choice, biased to the lower-right of every part — so the person pulling parts off the sheet always knows where the tab will be. On a circle: about 45° down the right side.
SHOP PROGRAMS · MEASURED
Every value carries measured, decided or assumed next to it in the tables — and a value that has never been supplied raises an error rather than guessing.
Early access
Prove the program
before the laser fires.
Kerfmaster is in development and cutting real production parts today — mild steel at 1/8″ is the proven case. If that sounds like your shop, get in early.
hello@kerfmaster.com