The power of CNC in
Ontario
National Sign
and Design Group in Brampton, Ontario,
has delved into several
new areas of production,
made possible via the purchase of a
CNC router
May 2001
 |
|
With the
addition of the Techno Series III CNC router, National
Sign is now bidding on jobs that were previously out of
its league. |
CNC machinery has allowed National Sign
and Design Group, located in Brampton, Ontario, to expand its
business into a wide range of products, opening new avenues
and new life.
National Sign recently
purchased a CNC router, and is now manufacturing furniture,
countertops, trade show displays, and other new sources of
revenue, paying for itself within 12 months of operation.
According to National Sign president
Jeff Wolf, the company more than doubled revenue when a
restaurant that needed a sign also hired the company to
produce its countertops and sneeze-guard. The company now bids
on higher-margin jobs that require close tolerances, using the
CNC router to achieve levels of accuracy and repeatability
that are impossible by hand.
National
Sign began as a home-based screen printing business, and
eventually expanded into vinyl graphics, a process in which
letters that have been designed on a computer are cut from
vinyl using a special plotter and then applied to a plywood
substrate. In the past (pre-CNC), when the company received
requests for wooden signs with dimensional cutouts, work was
contracted out to a company with a router.
Over the years, however, the demand for
this type of work kept growing while the quality and the
dependability of the outside contractor was becoming a
problem. This led National Sign to consider buying its own
router, specifically one that was computer-controlled, so it
could be programmed to cut computer-generated letters and
other designs.
The company identified
accuracy, repeatability, resolution, and reliability as the
most important selection criteria for the router. Some CNC
routers the company evaluated had components that needed
frequent maintenance and other items that needed constant
adjustment. The company wanted to avoid these sorts of chores
and concentrate on its business. Price was also a
consideration.
Accuracy and
precision
The search for a CNC router
eventually led us to Oldham Robinson, a machinery dealer in
Ancaster, Ontario. One of the products that this company sells
is the Techno Series III PC-driven CNC router from Techno-Isel. This machine is designed for production routing
and drilling on a wide variety of materials including wood,
plastic, MDF, solid surfacing materials and nonferrous metals.
The price includes the Mastercam CNC programming system, which
was originally designed for metalworking but is also well
suited for woodworking because of its ability to generate the
most complex contours with little programming
effort.
According to Wolf, the accuracy
level of the CNC machine was actually higher than the company
needed for sign making. With a positioning accuracy of ±1mm in
300mm, the company soon realized that the ability to produce
parts with tight tolerances could lead to new types of work.
The Techno system consisted of a 5’ x
10’ table with a rapid travel read of 800 ipm and a 5’ x
8’cutting area. The system has an 11.5-in. z-axis with
0.0005-in. resolution and repeatability and a cutting force of
200 lbs. maximum. The system also included a 3.5-hp Porter
Cable router head.
With the purchase of
the router, the company moved National Sign out of the house
and into a 5,000-sq.-ft. shop. After learning to set up the
router by means of its G Code driver software, the company
spent a few weeks getting used to the machine and producing
test parts.
The company initially used
its CNC routing capabilities to do standard signage jobs for
its existing clients and to take on contract work for other
sign makers.
“The machine gave the
company the ability to produce fancier signs such as those
with reliefs cut out of cedar planks,” says Wolf. “It also
gave us an aesthetic advantage in the production of wooden
signs with dimensional letters raised an inch or
more.”
New types of
work
Although the sign business was
expanding due to the CNC machine, it wasn’t long before the
company was using it to do jobs that weren’t related to signs
at all, says Wolf. What started out as a regular sign job
turned out to include a substantial amount of carpentry.
The company had been hired to make a
sign for a new juice store and while the company was
discussing the job with the owner, he happened to mention that
he was having trouble getting contractors to build his
countertops and the acrylic sneeze-guard above the juice
preparation area. Knowing that the router could cut these
materials, the company offered to do that work for him as
well.
The sneeze-guard was designed on
the computer to match the store’s display case. It was angled
so that as it comes up from thecounter it leans away from the
customer at about a 75-degree angle. At the top is a
horizontal, 12-in. shelf that is used for displays.
“Our designer added some shelves on the
kitchen side of the sneeze guard for rigidity. The whole unit
needed to fit precisely onto the counter with a margin of 1/4
in,” Wolf says.
After modeling the
entire sneeze guard on the computer, the designer broke down
the design into nine separate parts. He sent the files to the
router, which cut all of them from a large sheet acrylic in
about 20 minutes. No sanding was required. The pieces were
assembled and the sneeze-guard was ready in just a few hours.
The countertops were designed on the
computer to include holes for holding cups. The pieces were
cut with the router and assembled. The company also laminated
the countertops, using the router to cut the pieces of
laminate as well.
The success of that job
opened up other options for our company, says Wolf, as the
company is now producing trade show exhibits with the router
as well. National Sign has also been asked to help a local
manufacturer of wooden rocking horses.
“He was producing one horse every three
weeks by hand,” says Wolf. “The company used the Mastercam
software that came with the router to extrude his 2-D designs
for all the different pieces into 3-D. The company uses the
router to cut each piece from flat stock 2 in. thick, routing
out the curved surfaces of a leg, for example, across 180
degrees, then turning it over and cutting the other side.
Using this technique, the company can produce six horses in
the time it takes to make one by
hand.”
Currently, the company runs the
router between four and six hours per day, and is bidding on
jobs that never would have been considered before getting the
router. One of the jobs involves the production of templates
for a company that makes molds for automobile seat cushions
requiring hundreds of templates that must be accurate to
within thousandths of an inch.
Wolf says
the company is looking at possibly purchasing a second CNC
router if the volume of router work continues to grow.
For more information contact:
Techno, Inc., 2101 Jericho Turnpike, New Hyde Park, NY
11040.
Phone: 516-328-3970 Fax: 516-358-2576 E-mail: TECHNO
CNC ROUTER SYSTEMS