App Profile: Log BAND

nuMediaInn

Rating: 4/5

This is a great yield planning tool for my small home based sawmill where a one man operation need to plan and optimize yield on a project by project basis. Didn’t give a perfect five only because I see some control over board quantity and other minor upgrades that would make this indefensible. Thanks for the app!

michaelheggen

Rating: 3/5

The core concept of generating cutting patterns is good. I don’t know of any other app that does this. Unfortunately, the input screens are clunky. The pull-down lists don’t work well. Numeric input screens sometimes include a decimal point key and sometimes don’t (this is a big deal for imperial units). The total volume for a pattern can only be found by marking the log as done and going to the log list, which makes it difficult to compare the yield of different patterns. Placing the total volume on the same screen as the yield-efficiency slider would be much more helpful. I hope the developer addresses these issues and concentrates on making the app do one thing really well: provide several cutting patterns for a log quickly and easily and make it simple to compare between them. That is an app I would gladly pay for.

Bruce from Wisconsin

Rating: 4/5

This app for me is a game changer when coming up with a log cutting plan. But I found on my iphone 12 I could not change Board dimensions properly under “Stem &Saw” because the number pad that comes up does not include a decimal point. And yes I am definitely set for working in inches. (and what is “stem”) Maybe this is what andcpier was referring to. On the ipad there is no problem because we get the whole keyboard to work with. The one quirk on the ipad is that you have to have it orientated in “portrait positioning”. One other thing on the iphone is that entering the length of the log is awkward. The number keypad comes up and hides the field that you are trying to enter the number into. So as it is currently I just won’t be able to do much with it on my phone. Some instruction on of use of this app would be helpful for me. I did not find any. I have it mostly figured out but am unsure about some lesser used functions. Today I used the app to plan the cuts on a 24” log. The process went perfectly with the app telling me what height to set the blade and I followed my own logic on when to turn the log. The last cut left boards on the bed that were the exact dimension I wanted. More control over what size boards and how many of them that get incorporated into the plan would be an improvement. And there will be times when I would like to use it on my phone. Thanks much for your effort in getting it this far. It is really going to help me. I should mention that I added an inexpensive DRO on my mill and that is great to have for use with this app.