Sparky said:
Just wondering if any of you guys are running full time cabinet shops using the frestool LR 32. Same with the guide rail saw for cutting sheets down for boxes vs sliding table saw? I am having a hard time seeing any time saving and figured I would see if anyone was doing this.
Hi Sparky, I do own a sophisticated custom cabinet shop. I selected an industrial building large enough there is space to effectively use appropriate fixed equipment to do tasks for which such machines they are well suited. Yes, I do have a marvelous Felder Kappa 550 e-Motion saw with a 14' slider table. I also have 2 CNC nested routers and a CNC pressure beam saw.
Still, I also have a 4x18' table with a sacrificial surface, like a massive MFT, on which I use guide rails as long as 5000mm and TS55s to make plywood parts with bevels and odd angles. The beam saw efficiently makes very accurate plywood parts, but only when all corners are right angles. Fortunately that is the case with the majority of even custom cabinet boxes.
Many shops without a beam saw do use a slider table saw to process sheet material. The downside is because the sheet is moved relative to the saw, an effective slider saw requires more room than the beam saw. Also, when you start with a full sheet it is best to use two people to handle the full sheet on the slider saw. I have a Schmalz vacuum lift on a gantry serving the beam saw so a single cabinet maker can make far more parts per hour more accurately than can the slider saw. However, the slider saw is not limited to right angles. It can make bevels and odd angle miter cuts.
My experience is that in most cases a single cabinet maker can make the odd angle parts with the Festools as efficiently. The saving with the Festools is that they are not idle while the set up is changed. That changing of set up is a major cost factor with slider saws.
When I started my first commercial cabinet shop in 1959 I used several table saws with power feeds, which were then the state of the art. I also used line drilling machines to make the shelf-pin holes. Line drills can be cost effective in a factory where thousands of identical parts are made. I found line drills to not be cost effective where only a handful of identical parts are made at a time as is typical of custom work. The problem is when holes need to be skipped. With a line drill those bits need to be removed, and later put back.
The advantage to using the LR32 approach is that the part is stationary. You place a Holy rail in position, clamp it down. Then you move the router doing the drilling along the rail. The hole to be skipped are noted in pencil on the rail, and are wiped off when starting to make different parts. By the way, I only use OF1010 for the hole drilling.
Sure, I can use a CNC router to drill shelf-pin holes. If the arrangement of the holes is complicated, especially if the spacing is not in 32mm increments, I do use the CNC router. Also if a part needs other treatment to be done on a CNC router, then that machine is also used for the hole drilling. My CNC routers have multi-tool holders which are programed. So changing from a 5mm bottom drill to a 35mm hinge cup bit is automatic and very fast. Of course the hinge cup holes go on the doors which do not have shelf-pin holes.
Bottom line is that to be efficient in the cabinet making business you need to know how to make parts manually. All those CNC machines need to be programed, which requires knowledge of woodworking. The trick is to decide correctly which task is best done on a big machine and which can be done better manually. Also, all of us are in the cabinet making business because we are woodworkers. All of the cabinet makers working for me want to retain their manual skills. We accept the reality a beam saw can out perform us doing tasks for which it was invented, so we get a lot of satisfaction making those odd parts where guide rails and a TS55 work best. I figure that with the time I save using the CNC machines where they make sense I can afford to still make some parts manually.
