Question. I allowed head cuts and increased the complexity of recuts (with my optimising parameters) but I got a worse waste for the run.
Answer. You would usually expect allowing head cuts and/or increasing recut complexity to reduce waste and increase cutting time.
An unexpected result is invariably due to the specific mix of parts sizes and board sizes for a set of data. For example, if the parts do not fit the boards very well it may be that extra head cuts and/or recuts cannot be used enough to make much difference in the waste. Or it may be that a head cut with a checkerboard main can be cut more quickly than a staggered pattern with no head cut. It all depends on the size of the parts and number of staggers etc.
Taken over a reasonable number of runs the optimisers do follow the trends suggested in the manual and by general experience of cutting.
