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Andy,
Based upon our discussion on the phone Wednesday, I timed my CAD person. Here is what we came up with. Times include all design changes, layout, tool paths for piece cutting, tolls paths for profiling when re-introducing, optimizing and laser program.
Standard 3 sheet kitchen with 1 field seam. 1.5 hours
Today we did a 5 sheet kitchen and 2 sheets for the baths total time 3.5 hours. but it was pretty entailed including notching raised bar top around columns.
I would love to be able to tell you we did this in 30 minutes.
John
John,
I have talked to a few people and they say they can do everything you mentioned in about 30 minutes. That is extremely fast. I usually run about an hour after my templates are in a dxf format.
Andy
I would love to meet someone that can put the detail we put into our files in 30 minutes. Every strip of build up, high strength blocks, warranty pc, cutting board etc. It takes a little extra time because the nesting feature in Alphacam sucks.
John
John,
Did that 3 sheet kitchen have cove splash? Do you cut out your cove blocks on the CNC? If so, 1.5 hrs. is really good for doing all of that (and Andy, no wonder you can get all of this work done on the website – your fingers must fly across the keyboard). We cut out pretty much everything on the CNC, except for the high strength corner blocks for cooktops and such and small splash pcs. that are likely to move when cut from small pcs. from inventory. I use AutoCAD to draw the tops and then run the nested sheets through Router-CIM to create the programs. Do you draw in AutoCAD, or does Alpha-CAM have a sufficient drafting program for layouts? Or maybe another drafting program altogether? I have heard that the Router-CIM nesting package isn’t great for our application either – that’s why the owners decided not to get it. I think the nesting programs are more suited to cabinet parts and don’t cut it when you are nesting cove blocks along a wavy wall.
Take it easy,
Seth
We use AlphaCAM to do everything. I have yet to run across something I couldn’t do. I like the program because it is all one CAD/CAM. Plus the virtual cutout is really cool and saves many mistakes. Problem is the program cost about 5k so buying AutoCAD light and then using the supplied CAM software that comes with the machine is much cheaper way to go.
Seth,
I cut out my high stregth corner block with a v cutter and then a 3/8 bit and have no problems. I leave about .004 material so the pieces don’t move and it works great. I will try to post the DXF file in the CAD file section.
Andy
Andy,
we do about the same. We use alphacam on almost everything. Some more complicated parts we use autocad for. Our CAD guy is really good, I can design a part with wild stuff and he gets it dead on. Seth, we cut all parts for each job on the CNC while the job is being processed. We do like Andy said leave an “onion skin” about 4 hundreths of an inch on the first pass then clean up and if you get the right cutting order a small part is real easy. On the second pass you can run your CNC real fast to do this. We rough cut at 450+ inches perminute second pass is around 700.
John
Slightly off topic but there is a ss shop near me who stopped using his CNC for all but some repeat commercial jobs. He was the one that did the programming and he found that he was the bottleneck in the operation. He went back to stick templates because ANY fabricator/employee could understand and make the tops from start to finish.
We cut all the peices for each job so that the guys putting it together dont have to really do a whole lot of thinking. If all of the pieces are not cut and packaged together a piece is usually missing. So this makes the process a lot smoother. We set up a master template in alphacam that we import all tops into and apply the pieces. In the template is preset designs for inside corner blocks, splashes, receptacle cut outs, build up strips, etc. The initial set up took some time. We are cutting our computer time down more every day. We think that with in a couple of weeks we should be able to do the 30min trick.
John
Steve L wrote
Slightly off topic but there is a ss shop near me who stopped using his CNC for all but some repeat commercial jobs. He was the one that did the programming and he found that he was the bottleneck in the operation. He went back to stick templates because ANY fabricator/employee could understand and make the tops from start to finish.That seems like moving in the wrong direction. I know the CNC is not the end all, be all, but it sure does make it easy to hire new employees when all they have to do is assemble the “kit”.
Andy
Today I came up with a way to make my shop people really stupid. Let me explain. There is no thinking now for the guys doing assemble. We even made a program in the alphacam template so that even the pieces that get seamed together in the shop can only go together one way and wont fit on the end of something else. Because we do all these programs in advance it takes no time now to put in all these little things to save time out in the shop. I am timing every aspect of the job for all jobs run. Templating, CAD work, cutting, building, etc.
John
That sounds very interesting. Sometimes it can be tough if two parts are alike but not exactly! Good for you!
I would have to say that our average 2 or 3 sheet kitchen in 1/2″ takes me around 25 minutes (could be less on straight runs) not including 5-10 minutes to digitize job on a vertical digitizer. This includes tops , all buildup, sink/cooktop cutouts, color match and cutting board, labeling/engraving all pieces with job number and field seam/shop seam locations and any vgroove locations including thickness to be vgrooved if applicable (we run upside down for this purpose). We do not reintroduce for edge routing! (yet)
Is anyone else labeling/engraving jobs?
As per cooktop and strength blocks we normally run any scrap pieces we have through our vgroover and make a few hundred at a clip. We found this, though only a few minutes, frees up cnc time.
We do most of our residential work soley in alpha cam and have found it to be up to our needs. Commercially we will usually break the jobs down in autocad and do any difficult design work in there. I have found alpha cam fairly sluggish when it comes to loading and manipulated 40+ tops with full dimensions. Is anyone else experiencing this?
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