Our New Woodworking Advertisement
Tags: Thermwood, CNC, Advertisement, Woodworking, Nested Base, 3 Axis
Color Coded Labels
Tags: eCabinet Systems, New, Productivity, Labels, Color
Color Coded Labels are a new development from Thermwood Corporation to help increase your productivity. Here is an excerpt:
A typical nested based job consists of perhaps hundreds of parts representing dozens of cabinets, all intertwined in a series of nests. The first task is to separate the parts into individual cabinets.
This is normally done by placing labels on each part. Each label has a text statement with the cabinet name. Simply read the name and sort the cabinets by those names.
While this sounds simple, it actually takes quite some time. You must read each label (even this is a problem if your worker can’t read or speak English). Then you must read the labels on the stacks of cabinets you are sorting to find the matching name. This reading takes time and cabinets have similar names so mistakes are pretty easy to make.
Thermwood’s new patent pending approach prints a color bar on each label with a different color for each cabinet. Put the red parts with the red parts and the green parts with the green parts. This simple idea allows you to sort cabinet two to three times faster. This offers a significant productivity improvement.
We have developed a significant new improvement to productivity - Assembly Marks. Below is an excerpt of this exciting new process:
Another even more significant productivity improvement involves actually putting the cabinets together. Simple cabinets are not all that difficult to assemble so major productivity improvement is not likely but as the cabinet design becomes more complex, major productivity improvements are possible. Once fixed partitions, shelves or other features are added to a cabinet, determining exactly how to assemble the parts can become difficult. Generally you must create and print assembly drawings and even with these drawings, the process of sorting out the structure can take significant time.
Thermwood’s approach (also patent pending) machines assembly marks into each joint which define which part mates with which part. These marks are hidden once the parts are assembled. Assembly drawings aren’t needed and in fact, totally non-skilled workers can easily and quickly assemble even the most complex cabinets. One shop owner asked his cleanup man to assemble a cabinet as a test. This totally unskilled “cabinetmaker” assembled the cabinet quickly and accurately with no drawings or instructions. For most jobs this represents a productivity improvement that could rival that realized for the machining process itself.
So when looking for productivity improvements from CNC routers look to the supporting or peripheral processes and the impact you could have on downstream processes. Right now, today, that’s where the greatest return can be found.
Note: Thermwood has applied for patent protection on the assembly marks, color and symbol coding of labels and the supporting software for these. They will provide a royalty free license under any patents issued for any parts made on a Thermwood CNC router and has offered a royalty free license to software developers for file output to Thermwood CNC routers.
Welcome to our new blog! We plan to use this blog to communicate with our customers and keep you updated on new developments and news from Thermwood and our products.
