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Topic: cnc equipment and building?  (Read 2500 times)

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Offline samone

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cnc equipment and building?
« on: June 08, 2013, 12:25:36 AM »

I know from wood shop and metal work class in the past it is hard work to do stuff professionally handcrafted 100% by hand.

But I am assuming most of the furniture and consumer products (wooden tables , chairs , benches , sofas ,...etc ) that are mass produced are not by hand 100%.

I am wondering how much human intervention it takes not counting programing/pushing buttons on a cnc machine to make consumer products...

Does people that work with cnc machines have to move the object from one machine to the next or is that all automated to?

Take for example a spring bed does somebody manually tie the springs together and sew the fabric with a tool or is it all automated by machine.

I am try to grasp how many consumer products that are done with cnc machines how much human intervention does it take.

Don't get me wrong programming and operating a cnc machine is another ball game not easy. But I would like to know how much of the percentage of handcraftness still goes into the product (or more better put how much human intervention on average)

I know different items may have different amounts of human intervention.

Also would be cool to know how long it takes to make a table with a cnc machine.
Or how long it takes to make a modular home ... I believe this is around 2 week if I read correctly.
Though I haven't found anything on the process of mass producing chairs , sofas , tables , tv stands , beds . Or anything pretty much consumer wise that has to do with wood or metal.

Offline curiouscat

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Re: cnc equipment and building?
« Reply #1 on: June 08, 2013, 02:12:45 AM »
There's no general answer. The proportion of labor versus automation varies in products.

Some general observations:

1. Very few products any more will be 100% by hand

2. The more the pieces produced the more prevalent is automation. Lower the cost per piece more likely is automation.

3. Not all products are 100%  automated. Robots / CNC are good at certain tasks. Often final assembly (for furniture) etc. is still done by humans.

4. Often the move from say, 90% automation to 100% automation is very expensive and prone to problems. The efficient solution in many cases is to automate away whatever can reasonably be done and leave the parts that are hard to automate for a human.

5. Usual first targets for automation are hazardous steps (painting, polishing, lacquering), highly repetitive tasks (drilling holes with a jig) or tasks that need high accuracy.

In some products hand-production persists because of the premium price tag one can often get. This is not necessarily quality based but often perception.

Offline billnotgatez

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Re: cnc equipment and building?
« Reply #2 on: June 09, 2013, 04:40:06 PM »
try youtube,com search on
how things are made

I think there are several shows on cable TV that apply as well

I GOOGLED
how things are made
and got many good links
« Last Edit: June 10, 2013, 08:09:05 AM by billnotgatez »

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