By George Jeha
President
Eye-Catch Sign, Ltd.
Halifax, Nova Scotia

Eye-Catch Signs has increased its sign business volume by a factor of 3 in the last four years by installing a CNC router. The new router has improved productivity 300 percent to 1000 percent on cut-out and inlayed letters and carved wood signs. This makes it possible for Eye-Catch to easily beat the prices, quality and delivery time of competitors who still mainly produce letters and signs by hand. Using a Gantry System from Techno-Isel, New Hyde Park, New York, Eye-Catch can produce a typical high volume product, 5 inch cut-out letters, in less than 5 minutes compared to the 45 minutes that the same job used to take by hand. Productivity gains of this magnitude and higher have made it possible for the company to increase its profit margins even while lowering prices to its customers.

Quality of the work produced by the company has also been greatly improved. The machine has a resolution of 0.0005 inches which is about 100 times the precision that can be achieved by hand. So the letters and specialized shapes produced on the router are far more precise than hand-cut and any required copies are absolutely identical to the originals. The company trains its employees to achieve high standards all the way from design through production and finishing and the router makes it relatively easy to achieve these standards.

Eye-Catch Signs produces cut-out letters made of wood, plastic, bronze, aluminum, foam and other materials in sizes ranging from 2 to 50 inches. In the past, the company produced these letters using jig saws, band saws, files and sandpaper. The time required to produce a 10 inch letter by hand was about 45 minutes while a 36 inch high letter took about two hours. Now, the company can program any letter in two to three minutes using CASmate-Pro sign design software by Scanvec. It takes only a few minutes. The operator mounts the material on the table and touches a single button to cut the pattern in about two minutes.

Additional letters past the first one are even faster because the program can be repeated as many times as needed to cut multiple letters out of a single piece of material. The program automatically nests these letters to use as little material as possible which provides additional savings compared to manual methods. These same methods can be used to make special inlaid letters consisting of plastic letters set into an aluminum block. These letters were very difficult to make properly by hand in the past and typically took about two to three hours in a 5 inch size. Now, they can be produced in only slightly more than the time required to produce normal cutouts. The only difference is one additional toolpath in Mastercam and one additional router setup.

The router has also greatly improved productivity in producing carved wooden signs. These are typically produced from a wood blank 1-1/2 to 4 inches thick with letters, logos and artistic designs. The designs can be created much more quickly and accurately in the CASmate-Pro software and the finished sign can again be produced in minutes once the program is done. Then the sign is primed and colored by hand. A sign of average complexity used to take about two
weeks, which broke down to one week to carve out the sign by hand and one week for painting and drying. The new method takes only two to three hours to cut the sign so the company can complete the job in a single week. The Techno system is also capable of producing "hand-carved" or chiseled-effect work. The Scanvec software produces the code and the Techno router, utilizing simultaneous 3-axis motion, creates the desired effect.

The increases in productivity that were achieved with the Techno router have dramatically improved the performance of this business. Each person now does three or four projects per day while in the past each person would be lucky to complete just one project per day. Being the low cost producer makes it possible to price products under competition and thus increase sales volume. The fact that quality has gone up and up and delivery lead-time has been reduced has further increased sales volume. But higher productivity means the company is able to handle this volume without adding workers which increases profit margins. The company has added a number of employees for new business areas such as architectural metal so overall employment has increased.

The strength and rigidity of the table was also important. The Techno machine is constructed from extruded aluminum profiles which can support all the materials that E.C. uses and provides easy clamping. The machine also has four ground and hardened steel shafts and eight recirculating bearings in each axis. This shaft and bearing system produces very smooth play free motion which produces high quality cuts.

Techno routers have anti-backlash ball screws for play-free motion that make it possible to produce circles that are accurate to the 0.0005 inch machine resolution. These ball screws also make it possible to produce inlays with clearances down to the machine resolution. The ball screws have excellent power transmission due to the rolling ball contact between the nut and screws. This type of contact also ensures low friction, low wear and long life.

Eye Catch was also attracted to the software that the machine uses. Mastercam can import and export files from the DXF, IGES, ASCII, CADL and ANVIL formats which makes it possible to handle pre-designs from virtually any program. CASmate-Pro also has powerful import and export features and can also handle EPS files from illustrators. CASmate-Pro takes full advantage of the Windows clipboard and can use any font available through Windows applications. This is important since Eye Catch receives pre-designs from customers in a wide variety of formats and its own designers also use a number of different programs. The Techno system also works with all leading CAM design packages. A new user can be trained to use the software in just a few days..

Perhaps the biggest advantage of the router, however, was its low price. This was only $18,000 including gantry, controller and software. With the time savings and accuracy provided by the router, Eye-Catch software can offer its customers better products at a lower cost. Many competitors buy cut-out letters from Eye-Catch because they know they can't compete on price or quality. This has made it possible for the company to triple its sign business while increasing profit margin at the same time. Among other things, this higher volume helped finance a new, larger building which the company recently moved into.

The speed and high resolution of the Techno router has helped Eye Catch Signs triple employee productivity while improving quality and reducing delivery lead-time. The router has a resolution of 0.0005 inches, which is about 100 times the precision that can be achieved by hand.

The Techno machine has four ground and hardened steel shafts and eight recirculating bearings in each axis. This shaft and bearing system provides smooth play-free motion, which produces high-quality cuts.

 


Specialized shapes produced on the router are more precise than hand-cut and all copies are absolutely identical to the originals. For multiple cuts, the router automatically arranges the cuts to use as little material as possible.