[DigitalOi]

My Father's company (family business of 35 years) is considering purchasing a CNC machine (looking at a THERMWOOD CS-43) to aid in production of kitchen cabinets and a wholesale furniture line. We employ a small crew of 7-8 people, mainly family. We produce around 80-100 kitchens a year, mid grade with some higher end. The rest of our time is spent on furniture production - bedroom mainly. Main focus is to cut cabinet components quickly and accurately without adding skilled labor. We mainly build face frame cabinets but have a significant demand for a frameless look which we have been building as a framed cabinet with 1" stiles, 2" rails and 3/4 overlay. Assembly on these faux-frameless cabinets takes about double compared to our standard framed cabinets. We would like to develop a line of frameless cabinets to save time and give customers exactly what they want, with the help of CNC machining and edgebanding. Secondary uses would be to machine dresser sides for quicker assembly and also to machine drawer boxes for said furniture/cabinetry.

I have no experience with CNC. I've never even seen one run nor do I understand exactly what the process entails. I've been toying with e-cabinets for about 15-20 hours and have the hang it. I have most of the cabinet designs prepared with proper joinery- full dado pocket screw on framed cabinets, blind dado on frameless. My concern is the process after the e-cabs design. With no CNC experience, what can I expect?

What size vacuum pump is necessary to hold a nest of .5" to .75" baltic birch drawer boxes, say parts ranging from 5.0"x 13.0" to 6.5"x24.5" without the use of tabs?

What sort of time frames can I expect for cutting basic cabinets, or a next of drawer boxes from a maching like the CS43? It has a 12hp spindle, 11 position auto tool change, auto tool length measurement, and we were considing auto off load.

Any help is greatly appreciated.

[ger21]

I don't have any experience with Thermwoods or Ecabinets.

Good software, that's properly set up, should be able to take you from design to ready to cut in minutes. "Properly Set up" is the key here. With no experience, don't be surprised if it takes up to 6 months to be fully proficient. I've been doing this for nearly 20 years, and still learn new things regularly.

For vacuum, I'd go for something in the 20HP range. You can never have too much vacuum.
Even with a 20HP pump. you may struggle with parts that small. I would never even consider using tabs in a production environment, as removing them is way too time consuming. It's common practice to onion skin smaller parts. Cut all the small parts on the sheet first, leaving a thin bottom layer of around .01-.03", then go back and cut all the way through. We do this with all parts smaller than 400 sq inches, and never have parts move. With a clean spoilboard, we could get away with less, but as the spoilboard starts to get used, you lose a bit of vacuum with every sheet you cut.

Does that machine have a drill bank? Or do you need to drill with the spindle? Drilling is the most time consuming process with cabinet parts. On our Morbidelli, with a drill bank, an average sheet of cabinet parts takes about 5-7 minutes, with cabinet sides line bored for adj. shelves. With no drilling, this can be as low as 2-3 minutes. These times are with feedrates of about 1200ipm.
As a guess, I would expect a sheet of baltic birch drawer parts would be in the 10-15 minute range, if onion skinning all the parts, and adding dadoes for bottoms.

[DigitalOi]

Thank you for your sagacious insight, sir.

As far as the software goes it seems like ecabs does most of the work for me
(as far as making the components fit/resizing/joinery/etc. Is there any way to learn about proper toolpaths/feed n speeds/anything else I don't know about prior to owning a machine? Is all of this done at the control?

It looks like the optional vacuum pumps are 15hp/18hp for this machine. The onion skin technique definitely makes sense. Is this something that would be programmable at the control only? I don't see anything pertaining to these types of things in the eCabinets software. I don't know if the machine has an available line boring attachment, but I will definitely ask about that one.


Again, many thanks for your help!

[ger21]

Is there any way to learn about proper toolpaths/feed n speeds/anything else I don't know about prior to owning a machine?

That's all part of the learning curve. Tool manufacturers will supply recommended chip loads (feed and speed), but ther'll be some trial and error to figure out what works best for your application.

Is all of this done at the control?

No, this should be done in your software. I'm not at all familiar with e Cabinets, so I couldn't tell you where to look.

The onion skin technique definitely makes sense. Is this something that would be programmable at the control only?

No, this also would be done in the software. I have no idea how much control eCabinets gives you over the cnc output, but it should be able to do this.

[cabnet636]

With the Size and output of your Company A CNC is a really good addition. Gerry has answered your questions but I might Add that the learning curve is shortened with Companys who help with "Owner to Owner" support forums of which Thermwoods is Excellent. I would find it and check it out as well.

Thermwood / eCabinet Systems ? Index page

Welcome to CNC Cabinetmaking, I made this move in 07 and it was one of the best decisions I ever made in business.

[fixtureman1]

You may also want to check out the Ecabinets thread on the Shopbot forum as Shopbot can use E cabinets to out put to their machines