A couple of photos of our booth on the first day of the AWFS show in Las Vegas.  We are Booth #5200 - Great turn out so far!

**Update**

More Pics!

Demonstrating our CNC Routers, I-Cut, Links from eCabinets to ShopBot & from 20-20 to a Thermwood

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Nice sample of graphic produced with i-cut software on a Thermwood Model 45 CNC Router at AWFS Show in Las Vegas  

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Our "Wall of Applications" possible on a Thermwood CNC Router

20-20 Technologies and Thermwood Corporation have joined together to offer a smoothly integrated, highly productive manufacturing system for cabinet manufacturers.

"We are very excited about this new partnership," said Ken Susnjara, CEO of Thermwood.  "This represents a truly comprehensive approach from design and retail all the way through manufacturing, all working together smoothly and seamlessly.  It combines the best technology of both Companies to create an industry-leading offering."

The data process starts with the design.  Over 50,000 dealers use 20-20 Design or ShopWare CAD to layout and sell projects.  To machine a job, an output file from 20-20 software is sent directly to a Thermwood CNC router and the advanced CNC control on the Thermwood system automatically performs all required CAD functions, nests the parts, prints nest diagrams and labels and runs the job directly from full sheets of material.  For even higher production volume, rectangular panels without additional machining are sent to an optimized panel saw, and only parts that require CNC machining are sent to the router.  This not only increases overall production capacity, but represents an increase in productivity as well.

"The advantages to using nested based techniques for machining instead of cutting all panels on a saw and then processing machined parts one at a time on a machining center are significant," said Craig Yamauchi, Executive Vice-President of Manufacturing & Residential Solutions of 20-20 Technologies.  "Labor requirements are less and productivity is higher, sometimes substantially higher."

20-20 welcomes the opportunity to demonstrate the ease of use and high functionality delivered by this partnership for shops seeking best practices and robust integration at this year's AWFS show in July.  20-20 representatives will be on site to show how you can go from the showroom to the shipping dock with greater sales tools, lower costs, fewer errors and increased ROI.

Ken Susnjara, Thermwood's founder and CEO has taken forty years of experience as head of several companies in a number of highly competitive markets and distilled it into a 400 plus page book, "Entrepreneurial Skills". 

This work tackles all the difficult aspects of running a company in a competitive environment from a fresh, unique and decidedly non-theoretical basis. The author pulls no punches in telling you what works, what doesn't and why. During the last forty years, Ken took his company and others through several industries, with several totally unrelated products. He dealt with thousands of both small and large customers, with the government, with foreign customers and foreign investors and with virtually every kind of financing option available. He lost and made millions using almost every financing vehicle available, including public stock and bond issues. During this time he went through several major crises where the survival of a company rested on the turn of a card, so to speak. And all this time he learned.

Now he has taken that knowledge and that experience and put it a book to try to help other entrepreneurs. He offers a fresh view of corporate structures, product positioning and pricing, competing and selling, how markets work, advertising, trade shows, internet marketing and relations with your employees. He clearly and boldly tells you exactly what he thinks works and what doesn't in today's business world.

The over 400 page book has been initially published on Scribed at

http://www.scribd.com/doc/17062116/Entrepreneurial-Skills

Samples of the work are available at that site for free viewing so potential buyers can determine if these ideas and insights might just work for them.

Recently we asked ourselves a simple question - Why should someone purchase a Thermwood CNC Router over any of the other options on the market?  To us, this seemed like a no-brainer.  Of course they should purchase one of our machines, because they are superior to all the others, right?  Well, we think so, but that answer to such a simple question doesn't really explain anything about our advantages or help a potential customer understand the entire support system and huge range of unique tools and time-saving capabilities built into our control and machine.  We just take these powerful advantages for granted, and assume everyone knows about them....but how can they if we don't let them know?

Our next task was to come up with a concise listing of these features/advantages that could be easily understood without needing to go into complex detail just to explain everything to someone.  That proved to be easier said than done.  We stood back and started listing everything we have that gives our machines, control system, training and service and support programs a huge advantage over anything offered by our competition - it was a very long list! 

We spent the better part of a week refining this list into three main points (each also being broken down into further information).  The concise reasons we came up with are that someone should purchase a Thermwood CNC Router because we offer Better Machines with More Features and Better Support.  Anyone can say this, right?  But we can also prove it with facts.  To do this, we created a new area on our site that goes into further detail on this subject.  It breaks all of these areas down and explains everything in further detail. 

This exercise was a positive experience for us in helping to focus our message into a simple statement that includes everything a Thermwood customer receives as part of their machine purchase.  without sounding too "sales-like":

The bottom line is that Thermwood systems install fast, start up quick, are easier to use and maintain, produce more and last longer. 

The following two videos are provided by a customer of ours (John Cox's Creature Workshop - http://www.johncox.net/) in Queensland, Australia.  They show the creation of a character (Big Girl) on a Thermwood Model 67 CNC Router.  This character was used in a commercial for an Australian confectionary company.  The first video shows the making of the character and behind the scenes of the commercial shoot, and the second shows the final commercial.

We expect to officially release the extensive eCabinet Systems online training program by mid-May and are continuously adding sections up to that point.

A one year subscription to the eCabinet Systems Online Training program costs $950, and includes a hard copy of the 700 page Nearly Complete Guide to eCabinet Systems. After the first year, the training subscription can be extended for $350 per year.

About the Course:

We currently have 20 hours of tutorials available with the program, and more is being added everyday. The training course covers all subjects taught in Thermwood's week long eCabinet Systems Training Program without the travel and lodging costs.

This is an extensive, detailed course that will guide you through every function and capability of this extraordinary software. It is presented in clear, easy to understand language that will unleash the incredible power of eCabinet Systems.

To view more information or purchase the eCabinet Systems Online Training - Please Click Here

When a customer purchases a Thermwood CNC Router, they become part of our large Thermwood Customer Family. We created this Thermwood Customer Family video to show our appreciation. This video has been updated to show our newest Thermwood Customer Family members with their Thermwood CNC machines in their facilities.

Featuring the Model 90 - Thermwood machines aren't just for woodworking.  They are also used in a variety of composite, aerospace, trimming, patterns and mold making applications as well as others.  We will be attending the JEC Composites Trade Show on March 24th-26th in Paris, France, and created the following advertisement for that industry:

Check it out:

We have two FARO Laser Tracker units that are in use every day at Thermwood, performing both alignment and volumetric compensation on our new CNC Router builds.  We also offer this as a service to existing customers. 

Since we've implemented this technology, the amount of time required for machine alignments has been cut to less than half. What once took up to eight hours to complete can now be accomplished in approximately three.

FARO has a nice write up about the entire process here, and you can download a printable version here. 

If you would like more information on how this technology benefits both existing machines and new builds, please contact us.

I am the founder and CEO of Thermwood. If you check our web site you will find a new area where we offer a comparison chart of the nested based systems available today and some "straight talk" about the systems and industry.

I'm the one that put this together because of several things that have been happening and I thought I might use our new blog area to tell you about it.

We are trying to sell nested based systems to cabinet shops and in today's world, these sales are really important. In analyzing what's going on, two things stood out. First, customers that bought our product continually tell us they are pleasantly surprised at all the things it does for them. This is good because happy customers are always good. It's bad however, because the fact that they were surprised means we did a lousy job of telling them the advantages of our offering or what they should expect before they bought.

The second thing had to do with our Model 41 and Model 67 machines. In the wood industry our dealers have been telling us we needed a lower cost machine so we developed the Model 41. In order to build a machine at a lower cost you have to take something away so we used a single side drive for the gantry and purchased, rather than built, the Z axis assembly. This meant two things as far as the customer is concerned.

First, table size was restricted to 4'x8'. This meant that when combined with our three-dimensional compensation we could get good performance and good accuracy which is difficult to do with a single gantry drive. A larger table with this arrangement wouldn't work very well. Also, the shorter stroke of the purchased Z axis meant that the rotary playback for making carved posts and legs couldn't be used with this machine. We didn't consider this a major drawback since not too many shops ordered the optional playback system anyway.

The Model 90 was a little different. We had a solid and good selling product in our five axis Model 67. It did a great job in trimming and model and mold making and was probably the market leader in those applications. Our engineers designed up a higher performance version of the Model 67 and we called it the Model 90. It was quite a bit more expensive but the extra money made it perform substantially faster and better. Our sales folks told us they didn't think it would sell because you could do the same jobs with the lower cost Model 67.

In actuality however, the Model 41 attracted a lot of customers but virtually all of them moved up to the Model 45 because of better performance and more capability. The same thing happened to the Model 90. Over half of the customers switched to the higher cost-higher performance Model 90.

These things were bothering me because of a lot of talk in the forums and blogs about the price of nested based systems. The talk and blogs and forums all acted like all these systems are the same. Just like our customers didn't know what we were offering, the industry doesn't seem to know or appreciate the difference between low cost systems and higher cost systems, both ours and some of our competitors. They don't seem to have a clue about what you get for what you pay.

This caused me to try to lay out the whole thing in a clear, accurate and honest way. Based on the two observations, perhaps if potential customers really understand everything our systems offer, they would be willing to step up to the higher price just like they did with the Model 41 and Model 90. If not, at least they would both understand and accept what they are buying for what they are spending.

I tried to be as accurate as possible with this comparison. If you find any area where the comparison is wrong, please let me know and I will change it. Also, if there is an area where you think we should add additional items for comparison also let me know. My email is ken.susnjara@thermwood.com

For comparison purposes, I do not want to include items open for interpretation. For example, I believe our service is second to none, but the quality of service is value judgment rather than a provable fact so I have left those things out. You should check out service pretty carefully before buying, however. It is very important.