Free submit link, submit classified, submit article and rss videos
A Bermuda-based woodworking company's CNC (computer numeric controlled) machine paid for itself after only nine months of operation by allowing the company to profitably handle jobs they would have turned away in the past.
A Bermuda-based woodworking company's CNC (computer numeric controlled) machine paid for itself after only nine months of operation by allowing the company to profitably handle jobs they would have turned away in the past.
There is a great need on the island for complicated woodwork such as shutters and decorative pieces such as carved signs. Carpenters with traditional tools can't do these jobs fast enough to make them profitable. As the only owner of a CNC machine on Bermuda, CNC Automated Carpentry has now captured this entire market.
CNC Automated Carpentry of Bermuda was started last year by three partners with many years of construction experience on the island. Having worked with traditional tools all of their careers, they knew there were certain jobs that were just too time consuming to be profitable. For example, nearly all houses on the island have shutters to protect against storms and also to provide shade in the heat of the day. "The demand for new shutters is huge but making them by hand is extremely difficult," says Rick Vesely, one of CNC Automated Carpentry's partners. "With our previous methods, we just turned away that work." Other projects were also too labor-intensive to be profitable. These included any kind of highly detailed woodwork, such as decorative touches on rafters, or intricately lettered signs for homes or businesses. Since carpenters on Bermuda could not do this type of work without losing money, it was either sent abroad or just not done.
Then, they found the Techno CNC Machine from Techno-isel, New Hyde Park, New York, which offered the best of both worlds; the Techno router was affordable, accurate and versatile. Truly a great deal for the Bermuda woodworkers. The machine performs production routing and drilling on a wide variety of materials including wood, plastic, MDF, solid surfacing materials and nonferrous metals. The machine price included CAM software capable of creating designs as well as importing them from nearly every CAD system.
"After we studied these machines for a while, we learned why the Techno machine delivers higher accuracy compared to the low-end routers," says Vesely. "One reason is that it is made of higher quality materials." For example, the Techno machine is constructed on steel stress-relieved bases with hardened steel linear ways. Its shaft-and-bearing system produces very smooth, play-free motion and is an extremely rigid system that produces high-quality cuts. The machine also uses anti-backlash ballscrews. These screws have excellent power transmission due to the rolling ball contact between the nut and screws. This type of contact ensures low friction, low wear, and long life. The ballscrews also make it possible to produce wooden parts to the machine resolution of 0.0005 inch. "Instead of being ballscrew-driven, the less expensive machines use rack and pinion gearing, which has too much play to make accurate cuts in small areas." Vesely adds. "Also this type of gearing wears out quickly in the dusty environment of a carpentry shop. The other main difference we found between the Techno machine and the others was that the Techno uses a servo motor to control cutting motion while other machines use stepper motors, which can give a stair-step cutting effect." A servo motor gives the Techno machine a positioning accuracy of +1 mm in 300 mm and a repeatability of 0.01 mm.
Links
