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134   Phone: 516-328-3970 www.technocnc.com CNC Articles their  own  projections.  Most  of  these companies try to avoid these problems by scrambling to build customer orders as  they  are  received.  But  the  last thing  they  want  to  do  is  antagonize a customer by making them wait too long.  They  typically  look  for  small woodworking  manufacturers  like Cherry Tree that can respond very quickly to meet their needs. Need to respond quickly in the virtual furniture business   In the past, a quick turnaround was difficult  because  Cherry  Tree  used the  typical  labor-intensive  process that  has  been  used  by  custom furniture  manufacturers  for  many years. Craftsmen and women cut out pieces from medium density fi berboard (MDF), plywood, or hardwoods using traditional shop equipment. If the piece has curves or other complex shapes, a template is usually produced and the parts are trimmed fl ush to the template. Building an accurate template requires a huge amount of skill. Even cutting out  and  drilling  simpler  pieces  with straight edges to the required level of accuracy is no job for a beginner. As the complexity of the design rises, the time required to build it also increases, to the point where a company that uses traditional methods may decide that it isn’t practical to even bid on the job.   Arthur Allison, owner of Cherry Tree Custom  Woodworks,  faced  these kinds of problems. In some cases,he was unable to provide customers with the delivery dates that they originally requested. In other cases, he had to turn down work because he was unable to deliver it in the time frame that it was needed. Arthur was aware that many larger  furniture  manufacturers  had already  moved  to  CNC  equipment CNC Router Cuts Leadtime 63% For Build-To- Order Furniture Manufacturer which  allowed  them  to  take  much of the skill and time out of the job of accurately producing difficult shapes. But the equipment that he had seen advertised and in shows was either cost prohibitive  or  else  could  not  provide the level of accuracy and ruggedness needed to meet his requirements. For a  number  of  years,  he  watched  the CNC equipment market and waited for a machine to come along that would meet his requirements. Low cost plus high accuracy    “The LC machine from Techno is the fi rst one that I saw that economically provided  the  accuracy  and  durability we needed,” Arthur said. “The machine was designed with just the right mix of features for the small to medium sized custom  furniture  manufacturer.  For example, it has ball screws on all three axes and a closed-loop servo control system. These are the kind of features that are required for the accuracy that our customers demand. Yet the machine with a 50 by 96 inch travel complete with all required software costs under $20,000.  When  I  saw  the  Techno,  I realized that this was a machine that could pay for itself very quickly with the volume of work that I had to put through it.   Styles and tastes change so quickly in the furniture business that any company that builds up a substantial inventory risks having to unload it at a substantial loss if customer buying patterns change. Cherry Tree Custom Woodworks, Orange Park, Florida, helps small furniture  retailers overcome this problem by providing such a fast response time that most of  its  customers  don’t  need  to  give the  go-ahead  to  produce  a  product until they have an order in hand from their customer. The critical issue then becomes  producing  the  piece  as quickly as possible in order to keep the customer happy. Cherry Tree has dramatically reduced delivery time by producing  most  items  on  a  Techno low-cost computer numerical control (CNC)  router  that  produces  highly accurate work from a CAD program, eliminating  the  need  for  what  used to  be  a  very  time-consuming  and skill-intensive manual task. The time required  to  produce  a  typical  piece has  been  cut  from  27  to  10  hours, so fast that in most cases customers assume that their furniture is simply being delivered from stock.   Cherry  Tree  Custom  Woodworks produces beds, entertainment centers, drawers,  mirrors,  and  just  about anything else that you can imagine in the area of custom furniture. The company serves as the manufacturing arm for a number of small and highly creative furniture  designers  and  marketers. These  companies  typically  sell  their wares  over  the  Internet  or  through retail outlets. Many of these companies are relatively small operations whose sales volume can fluctuate drastically from month to month. Building up an inventory of products would leave the company  open  to  a  major  financial hit if customer demand did not match