CNC Reproduction Work ... Technology in the Workplace

Friday, October 16, 2009

CNC Reproduction Work ... Technology in the Workplace

10/9/09 We have had our Multicam 1000 CNC router now for about four years. Trevor's been running it for almost 3 of them and we've refined our technique for reproducing stuff so that it goes remarkably smoothly. This table came to us recently. It was a Grand Rapids piece, probably from the 20's, not particularly valuable except sentimentally ... The end piece was broken off and missing but we had the broken off molding. So, here's how we get from the first picture to the last picture below ... Holman Studios is doing a little orange shellac and colored lacquer work on just the top and new piece to get it looking good... Click the pictures to enlarge them.

The table as it came to us

The table when it left ...

Close up of the new end that Trevor made .... Below shows how he did it ....

First step, photograph the good end

Get the image full size, (in this case 13.06 x 1.81) in Photoshop and save it as 1 to 1 (1306 pixels x 181 pixels

Import it into your CAD program in a box 13.06 x 1.81 and draw over it ... Save it as the right kind of file for the toolpath program to read

Import it into Enroute and toolpath (have the program tell the router how to cut it, what bit, what order,etc.) it

Make a sample in luan to check it ... In this case ... perfect

Trevor then made a 3 ply replacement sandwich piece (two vertical pieces of veneer on a horizontal grain 1/8" solid wood core ... net 3/16ths " thick

Cut the real thing, stain it, install it and take it to Steve .... Start to finish ??? Hmmm, we'll see when we do the time clock, but probably less than you might think ... 4/16 total elapsed time for Trevor, 4.27 hours, stained and ready to finish ...

We do all kinds of custom cnc work for our clients and for other furniture makers, both local and nationwide. This week we made the (200?) chair parts below for one friend and Monday we have a couple of big slabs to mill flat for another ... keeps Trevor off the streets....