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Thread: Stepping into the 1990's

  1. #31
    Im no where near the level that you are. You seem to be pursuing 5 million dollar a year shop production at all times in a small (by no means small) shop.

    We do a lot of operations on the CNC that could very easily be done faster on another tool. That said, when they are done on that other tool there has to be an operator there tending and feeing that tool, there has to be space for that tool, power for that tool, dust collection. I remember this watching one of your initial videos when you said you could have drilled those shelf holes faster manually. I hear this day in and day out from people in the shop, or people visiting the shop watching. They think "well I could have run that board through the table saw faster". My answer is alway "You wanna race?". They say no.

    My resolution is always that you will not do it with more accuracy,... and you will not do it for free while Im doing something else. I can have the CNC whirring in the background doing some arbitrary task that I would be paying someone to screw up while Im sanding, doing paperwork, cleaning.

    We process a lot of hard maple. Which is a B*tch to sand. We can feed it through the sander and then have to fight to knock down the cross grain on the rails OR we can surface on the CNC (slower) and get a 120 grit finish off the machine. The alternative is to machine normally and pay someone to stand at the sanding station for an eternity.

    We spray waterborne. If we feed material through the planer and there is a single small knick in the knives (happens in the first 5' on a fresh set of knives) that nick pounds down the material that then has to be grain raised with water, and sanded out. On the CNC... no knicks no compressed fibers, no grain raise, and we are sanding with 120 and 150 and done.

    I have no desire to run a factory. But I enjoy refining my process by watching those who do.

  2. #32
    I'm curious what strange uses I'll find for this machine.

    My hole drilling comment was more just me feeling inadequate. Drilling holes 50 at a crack is the only thing I can do faster or on par....

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