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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. In the
first nine months of using the machine, the company produced a
variety of pieces including decorated rafter ends, signs with
elaborate lettering and logos, arched door frames, and $30,000 worth
of shutters. Most of these projects would have taken days or weeks
to do by hand, if they could have been done at all. Yet they were
finished in hours on the CNC machine. "Jobs that we would have
turned away in the past have been done on the machine at more than a
30 percent profit," says Rick Vesely, partner, CNC Automated
Carpentry. "In less than one year of owning it, we've billed
$450,000 worth of work."
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.
Finding the right machine
When the three partners decided to start their own business, they
realized that the ability to take on the jobs that typically left
the island would be a strong competitive advantage. One of the
options they found was a louvre-groover machine, which is specific
to producing shutters. At a cost of $35,000, it was ruled out
because that was all it could do. "There was a lot of other work
besides shutters that we wanted do and we couldn't see tying up so
much of our capital on one machine," Vesely adds. So they looked
into computer technology that could automate the production of
intricate and difficult pieces. "We didn't know a lot about
computers, but we knew there were machines that could be programmed
to cut wood automatically according to drawings in the computer,"
says Vesely. "This would be preferable to a louvre-groover because
it could perform multiple operations, such as routing, shaping,
mortising, and so on."
Quickly, they turned their search to the
Internet. After some initial research, they were not thrilled.
First, they found a heavy and expensive machining center designed
mostly for metalworking. The enormous price tag of the machining
center greatly exceeded their company's budget allocation of
$50,000.
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Next, they looked into an inexpensive
router but it was also less accurate and wasn't equipped to handle
the highly intricate carving that they needed for their detailed
artistic carvings. 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.
Good vendor support
None of the partners had ever used CNC equipment before. "Our
only computer experience was with PCs," says Vesely. "When we got
the machine, we didn't even know how to turn it on. That's another
big reason we're happy we went with Techno," he adds. "They have
provided us with excellent support. They walked us through all the
issues we were unfamiliar with, from creating drawings in the CAM
program to setting up parts on the table. They have never failed to
help us when we had a question."
Since installing the Techno machine CNC
Automated Carpentry has found it to be "the most versatile tool in
the shop," according to Vesely. The wide range of projects that the
machine has been used for certainly bears this out. One of its main
roles is for producing shutters. "Now we are meeting this huge
demand," says Vesely. The partners have also used the machine to
create large pieces such as templates that were cumbersome to do by
hand. "Another construction company needed these really large
templates for arched doorways,"
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Vesely explains. "With traditional
tools, they would have had to lay out three or four sheets of
plywood or MDF board on the ground and cut these 180-inch radiuses
with a jig saw.
Then they would have spent a lot of time
hand sanding to their marks but even so, templates would not have
been accurate enough." He estimates that the job would have taken
six or seven hours to do by hand. Instead, the other company asked
CNC Automated Carpentry to make the templates on the CNC machine.
Vesely was able to program the arch shape and have templates ready
to cut in an hour.
Total time to produce five templates,
including programming and cutting, was two days. "They were perfect
half rounds, which was far more accurate than they ever could have
been by hand," he adds.
On another job, the machine was used to
create scrollwork for the exposed ends of rafters. This was a big
job involving about 60 15-foot rafters. Normally, the scrollwork
would have been hand cut from plywood templates. "This job would
have been very labor-intensive by hand because after all the time
you spent cutting, you would have to go back and sand each rafter as
well. It would have taken at least two days," explains Vesely. "We
programmed the scroll work in the CAM program, put these large
rafters on the machine and cut each one in less than 20 seconds. We
did all 60 in one hour. As fast we could put a rafter on the machine
and press 'Start,' it was done." After evaluating the labor hours
and the cost of the materials, the company determined that it made a
35 percent profit on that job.
The company also used the machine to
create a menu box for a restaurant. It could have been just a basic
wooden box, but knowing how easy it would be to do more elaborate
work with the Techno machine, Vesely decided to embellish the box.
"The restaurant is called Robin Hood Pub and their sign has little
Robin Hood hats on it," he explains. "I programmed a few of those
hats and some arrows in the CAM software and used the Techno machine
to carve those features into the wood. It made it a more interesting
than just plain wood." He also used the machine for an unusual job
involving a BMW convertible. The owner wanted speakers mounted in
the trunk an had left some oval holes for access to the wiring. He
wanted to cover these holes with something that he could see through
but wouldn't break due to vibration from the speakers. Vesely used
the Techno machine to cut one-inch thick pieces of acrylic to fit
the holes precisely. Then he took the additional step of carving the
BMW and speaker vendor's logos in acrylic. "When people see these,
they don't think they were done on this island," Vesely adds.
The purchase of a CNC machine was an
excellent way for the three partners of CNC Automated Carpentry to
start their business. It ensured a competitive edge and has enabled
the company to handle a great deal of work with only four people.
And the machine paid for itself so quickly that its use in the
future will be even more profitable. |
