Once again, Thermwood is a proud sponsor of the FREE CabinetMakerFDM Woodworking Business E-vent.  The first such show (held last November), was a great success, and we invite you to attend this unique and interactive event on May 19th, 2011.

As an attendee, you’ll have the opportunity to view five educational sessions on innovations in the wood products industry, network with colleagues, visit our booth and chat in real-time in the Exhibit Hall - All from the comfort of your office!

Thermwood will also be running live machine demonstrations (nested based cabinets, moldings and various other items) on our CabinetShop 43 and Fravol Edgebander throughout the day - available via webcam.

Register online to join us at the Woodworking Business E-vent. We look forward to seeing you there!

At the recent IWF show in Atlanta, Thermwood partnered with Hafele, Columbia Forest Products and Conestoga to build complete cabinets for Habitat for Humanity.   

Thermwood demonstrated a working production cell consisting of the CabinetShop 43 CNC Router (for nested based applications) and a Fravol S2 ECO edgebander.  Attendees were able to get hands on experience using the easiest and simplest system in the industry.  Within a few seconds they selected a product to cut, modified the size and watched the machine cut their parts.  Attendees then took the parts to the edgebander to complete the process.

Complete cabinets were produced at the show from the ¾” thick, pre-finished maple plywood provided by Columbia Forest Products.  This Pure Bond plywood is sealed with AquaSEAL (a formaldehyde-free recyclable overlay conforming to the latest in green technology).

Hafele provided the hinges, slides and shelf hardware for the cabinets, and Conestoga Doors providedfinished five-piece doors and solid wood drawer fronts. 

Cabinet joinery was Thermwood’s new revolutionary Barb Dado joint (patent pending), which allowed the cabinets to be put together without the use of clamps or other holding methods.  The Barb Dado joint is a modified versionof the Blind Dado joint in which we machine a series of barbs in the mortise slot. When you press the parts together, the barbs bend down, bending the fibers in the wood downward firmly holding the pieces together. It is a lot harder to pull it apart than to put it together. This means you can assemble cabinets without screws, clamps or any other fasteners.

The result were beautiful, complete cabinets produced quickly, utilizing an innovative new, highly efficient manufacturing approach which results in a superior structure coupled with enhanced use of materials, all at a dramatically lower price. All cabinets produced at the IWF were donated to Habitat for Humanity.

We are streaming live from IWF, starting today 8/25/10. See the show without leaving your office!

http://www.livestream.com/thermwoodcnc

Featuring the New Barb Dado Joint:

We have a CabinetShop 43 production cell at our Booth # 5153 demonstrating the new Barb Dado Joint. This is a new development at Thermwood that we have applied for patent protection on. The joint is a modified version of the Blind Dado joint in which we machine a series of barbs in the mortise slot. When you press the parts together, the barbs bend down, bending the fibers in the wood downward firmly holding the pieces together. It is a lot harder to pull it apart than to put it together. This means you can assemble cabinets without screws, clamps or any other fasteners.

This simple idea is pretty revolutionary. We have a video from another project which shows how a cabinet is assembled using the barb dado joint. You can find it at:

http://www.thermwood.com/thermwood_barb_dado_joint.htm

Today is the first day at the WMS show in Toronto where our Canadian Dealer, CNC Automation has a very nice booth with a couple of Thermwood CNC Routers including the New CabinetShop43. We are continualy adding pictures from the show to our TwitPic account. You can view them here:

http://www.twitpic.com/photos/thermwood

You can also follow Thermwood, CNC Automation and the WMS show on our twitter page or blog:

http://www.twitter.com/thermwood

The booth consists of two Thermwood routers, CabinetShop45 and CabinetShop43., and two Fravol Edgebanders, S4 and S7.  They are demonstrating eCabinet Systems and QuickCut on the CS43, cutting random cabinets and 20-20 Technologies is sending files to the CS45.

The CS45 is also creating furniture for Canada's Habitat for Humanity. Once the parts are cut on the machine, they will get edgebanding, finished and assembled right there in the booth, so there are other secondary type of machines within the booth.

 Here are a couple of pics of the CNC Automation /Thermwood booth at the opening of the show:

We've created a couple of videos demonstrating the superior performance of the CabinetShop 43 in a variety of applications.  The first is the Carving of an inset carving, and the second is Cabinet Cutting.

About the CabinetShop 43:  The CabinetShop 43 offers premium performance not normally seen at this price point. For example, it has positioning speeds to 3,180 inches per minute and programmed cutting speeds to 2,250 Inches per minute. The actual speed at which you can cut is determined more by tooling and material than by the machine, but its speed is indicative of the overall solid CNC performance of the CabinetShop 43.

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.

A CNC panel saw coupled with a machining center is the most common production arrangement for higher volume cabinet production. Nested based machining is more productive in lower volume shops but hasn't offered enough throughput for larger shops. Now there is a way to combine the best of both approaches to achieve even higher throughput and higher productivity.

The idea is simple but the technology to achieve it has been elusive until now. The basic approach is to use the panel saw to cut rectangular parts that do not require additional machining and use a CNC router to cut parts that require machining using a nested based approach. As simple as the idea sounds, it offers some significant benefits.

1. You only need to cut parts on the panel saw that don't require additional machining. Less panel saw labor.
2. You don't need to sort parts at the panel saw that need additional machining since they are not cut there. Even less labor.
3. You don't need to transfer parts from the panel saw to the machining center.
4. At the CNC router, you load full sheets of material instead of identifying, selecting programs, handling and setting up each part, one at a time. Much faster.
5. During the machining cycle the operator has time to do other operations such as edge banding which is not possible if you are handling one part at a time.

The technology to do this now exists and in a very refined form. For example the system can easily do the following:

1. Automatically separate rectangular parts and send them to the optimizer and send all machined parts to the CNC router.
2. Automatically nest the job at the machine control accommodating whatever material is available.
3. Print nest diagrams and part labels at the machine control.
4. Trim and bar code scrap for later use.
5. Easily re-cut a damaged part or add it to the next job right at the machine.

This approach offers more throughput, smoother operation with less labor and less chance for operator error and implementing it is rather easy. You will keep your panel saw, since our software will work with virtually any panel saw optimizer. Replace your machining center with a CNC router. We will program your product line into our manufacturing software which will work directly with your existing cabinet sales software. That's it, you are ready to run.

This approach is especially attractive if you need to replace your existing machining center. Our large table, nested based CNC systems are about the same price as traditional machining centers but, are a lot more productive and offer better throughput.

This is an informational breakdown on the cost of a cnc router to produce mdf doors as opposed to traditional methods of producing traditional five piece doors.  This was put together by Bob Law, Regional Manager of CNC Automation (a Thermwood dealer).

Most people equate nested based manufacturing with cabinet box components and the labor savings, added precision and ease of assembly that goes along with automation of this process, but a big part of a quality system is the machining of peripheral items.  In my opinion and the opinion of large percentage of our users, the ability to produce "high end" paint grade MDF doors more than justifies their lease payment which in reality makes the cabinet advantages free. 

A large stigma attached to MDF doors is the customer's perception that MDF is cheap or a lesser quality in comparison to popular 5 piece doors (which if you think about it is clearly not the case). 

A large headache for a kitchen manufacturer is a call 6 months to a year after the install when the center panel has shrunk and the paint is cracked along the inside of their rails and styles, or the miters have opened leaving an unsightly gap in the corners of all of their doors. 

In most cases a customer will easily opt for a 1 piece MDF option if presented with the fact that their MDF door will stand the test of time and be guaranteed not to move and deteriorate the look of the dream kitchen that they have worked so hard for. 

Now all MDF door packages aren't created equally.  Most systems have the ability to do single pass doors that look like the prototypical MDF door with an outside profile as well as a simple inside profile.  Our software, which is called Panelmetrix, has the capability to create multipass 1 piece doors, as well as automatic mullion and glass cutout machining.  It can also create bead board machining, valance machining, 1 piece multipanel machining (which can be used for tall doors, wainscoting, range hoods etc...) and a number of other features that will turn door machining into an order entry system once a door style is developed.  Panelmetrix is available exclusively to Thermwood owners and is the ultimate companion to eCabinet Systems.

Sales techniques aside, the justification goes something like this:

MDF Doors

• Average 5 piece paint grade door cost per kitchen = $3000.00
• Material cost for MDF for the same = $300.00
• Approximate machine time = 4 hours
• Added Gross profit for one kitchen = $2700.00 which in most cases will cover a lease payment for a Thermwood nesting system.
• Bead Board:
• Sheet of Bead board = $80.00
• Sheet of 1/4" MDF = $20.00
• Approximate machining time = 7-8 minutes depending of the spacing
• Savings per sheet of $60.00

In closing, the cheapest system on paper over a short period of time can be by far the most expensive.  MDF doors coupled with modeled curved moldings, preprogrammed carvings, dovetailed drawer box machining, can all be easily machined with our system and for small to midsized shops especially, can make the difference between profitability or the addition of just another one dimensional tool in your shop.

Please take the time to view a few typical examples of quality MDF door machining below.

MDF Door Video #1

MDF Door Video #2

Thermwood has added a "CNC Routers by Application" section on their home page.  By selecting the different applications, you can view examples, videos and the machines related to each application.  We will continue to add more pictures and videos to each application.

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.