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Styles and tastes change so quickly in
the furniture business that any company that builds up a substantial
inventory risks having to unload it at a substantial loss if
customer buying patterns change. Cherry Tree Custom Woodworks,
Orange Park, Florida, helps small furniture retailers overcome this
problem by providing such a fast response time that most of its
customers don’t need to give the go-ahead to produce a product until
they have an order in hand from their customer. The critical issue
then becomes producing the piece as quickly as possible in order to
keep the customer happy. Cherry Tree has dramatically reduced
delivery time by producing most items on a Techno low-cost computer
numerical control (CNC) router that produces highly accurate work
from a CAD program, eliminating the need for what used to be a very
time-consuming and skill-intensive manual task. The time required to
produce a typical piece has been cut from 27 to 10 hours, so fast
that in most cases customers assume that their furniture is simply
being delivered from stock.
Cherry Tree Custom Woodworks produces
beds, entertainment centers, drawers, mirrors, and just about
anything else that you can imagine in the area of custom furniture.
The company serves as the manufacturing arm for a number of small
and highly creative furniture designers and marketers. These
companies typically sell their wares over the Internet or through
retail outlets. Many of these companies are relatively small
operations whose sales volume can fluctuate drastically from month
to month. Building up an inventory of products would leave the
company open to a major financial hit if customer demand did not
match their own projections. Most of these companies try to avoid
these problems by scrambling to build customer orders as they are
received. But the last thing they want to do is antagonize a
customer by making them wait too long. They typically look for small
woodworking manufacturers like Cherry Tree that can respond very
quickly to meet their needs.
Need to respond quickly in the
virtual furniture business
In the past, a quick turnaround was
difficult because Cherry Tree used the typical labor-intensive
process that has been used by custom furniture manufacturers for
many years. Craftsmen and women cut out pieces from medium density
fiberboard (MDF), plywood, or hardwoods using traditional shop
equipment. If the piece has curves or other complex shapes, a
template is usually produced and the parts are trimmed flush to the
template. Building an accurate template requires a huge amount of
skill. Even cutting out and drilling simpler pieces with straight
edges to the required level of accuracy is no job for a beginner. As
the complexity of the design rises, the time required to build it
also increases, to the point where a company that uses traditional
methods may decide that it isn’t practical to even bid on the job
producing difficult shapes. But the equipment that he had seen
advertised and in shows was either cost prohibitive or else could
not provide the level of accuracy and ruggedness needed to meet his
requirements. For a number of years, he watched the CNC equipment
market and waited for a machine to come along that would meet his
requirements.
Arthur Allison, owner of Cherry Tree
Custom Woodworks, faced these kinds of problems. In some cases, he
was unable to provide customers with the delivery dates that they
originally requested. |
In other cases, he had to turn down work
because he was unable to deliver it in the time frame that it was
needed. Arthur was aware that many larger furniture manufacturers
had already moved to CNC equipment which allowed them to take much
of the skill and time out of the job of accurately producing
difficult shapes. But the equipment that he had seen advertised and
in shows was either cost prohibitive or else could not provide the
level of accuracy and ruggedness needed to meet his requirements.
For a number of years, he watched the CNC equipment market and
waited for a machine to come along that would meet his requirements.
Low cost plus high accuracy
“The LC machine from Techno is the first
one that I saw that economically provided the accuracy and
durability we needed,” Arthur said. “The machine was designed with
just the right mix of features for the small to medium sized custom
furniture manufacturer. For example, it has ball screws on all three
axes and a closed-loop servo control system. These are the kind of
features that are required for the accuracy that our customers
demand. Yet the machine with a 50 by 96 inch travel complete with
all required software costs under $20,000. When I saw the Techno, I
realized that this was a machine that could pay for itself very
quickly with the volume of work that I had to put through it. I took
a close look at the machine at one of Techno’s technology centers
and proved to myself that it could not only handle every job in our
shop but also make it possible for us to take on jobs that we
weren’t capable of handling in the past.”
Techno’s LC series CNC routing system
provides a number of critical features that allow it to deliver
accuracy and long-term reliability of a level that has previously
only been available from machines at a much higher cost. The LC
Series machine is constructed on a heavy steel base, includes a
T-Slot aluminum table surface, ball screws on all threes axes,
closed-loop servomotor drives, and comes with Techno’s Windows-based
G-Code interface that is upgradable free for the life of the
machine. These premium drive components offer smooth play-free
motion, a high level of accuracy and repeatability, that requires
minimal maintenance. The closed-loop servo control system provides
constant position feedback, higher power, and smooth continuous
motion that eliminates the possibility of losing position in the
middle of a part. With these high-end features, it was easy to
recognize that we would get high-speed routing and superb cut
quality.
The new method of producing furniture
to order
Arthur now produces most furniture
pieces by a new and much more efficient method. His customers can
provide their designs in the form of paper drawings. Once he has a
drawing in a CAD/CAM software program, he makes any desired
modifications and scales it to any size. When he is satisfied, he
automatically generates a G-Code program used by the router to
produce the design. He loads the material on the machine, pushes the
start button and walks away while the router finishes the part. The
time required to produce a typical part has dropped from hours to
minutes.
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As a typical example, Arthur mentioned a
dresser designed in the form of a lighthouse that he builds for one
of his customers in response to consumer orders. The dresser has
many pieces with complicated curved surfaces that are required to
create a fairy-tale look. In the past, Arthur produced it by first
drawing each piece in full scale on paper, cutting out the paper,
gluing them to plywood, then cutting the plywood to shape with a
scroll saw, and finally sanding the board so it could serve as a
pattern. Each pattern lasted long enough to make three to five
pieces, unless it was nicked by the saw used to cut out the finished
parts. Using this method, it took Arthur about 27 hours to produce
the dressers. Now, he imports the drawing into EnRoute 3, converts
it to a CAD file, and exports G- Code. Then he loads the machine
with wood, pushes the start button, and watches while it cuts out
each piece. He can now produce a dresser in only 10 hours, and about
half of that time he can be doing other things while the machine is
cutting out the pieces.
A complete package including training
and support
Arthur added that the Techno sales staff
was very helpful in helping him select the right machine for his
needs and providing the training he needed to quickly become
productive. The machine has proven to be very reliable, not
requiring any service outside of routine maintenance in the year
that he owned it despite the fact that he keeps it running nearly
nonstop. The machine comes fully assembled and includes Techno’s
Windows-based CNC G-Code interface with free lifetime software
upgrades. The machine is available in five sizes, with work
envelopes of 30 by 24 inches, 48 by 48 inches, 48 by 96 inches, 59
by 120 inches, and 78 by 120 inches. Each of these models provides a
repeatability of 0.001 inches, a resolution of 0.0002 inches and a
maximum speed of 250 inches per minute, with an available upgrade to
their high-speed version of 900 inches per minute. There is also a
wide selection of spindles, software, and accessories to choose from
such as laser scanning modules, 2D and 3D digitizing probes, vacuum
tables, 4th axis rotary tables, coolant systems, and tooling. Arthur
chose the 4-foot by 8- foot model which best fits his material sheet
sizes and his total investment including software was under $20,000
“In the past, producing complicated
parts used to be a very difficult and labor intensive task,” Arthur
concluded. “It was not unusual even for an experienced person like
myself to ruin a part and have to start that part over. The purchase
of a CNC router has greatly improved the situation. Now, I can
program the item once and then reproduce the program with 100%
accuracy on the CNC router whenever a customer places an order. The
time required to turn out the typical item has been reduced by
nearly 2/3. This means that I can help my customers provide better
service to their customers by delivering furniture in much less time
than was required in the past. I have also been able to reduce my
prices by an average of 10%, which makes me more competitive. In
spite of that price reduction my profitability has increased because
I can now get more done in less time. Clearly, CNC routers have the
potential to help the domestic custom furniture business compete
much more effectively with imports and large chains.”
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