How to make lots of cabinets fast.

[Spectric]

Hi all

This is an interesting video about mass production of kitchen cabinets, no woodworkers needed.

 

[doctor Bob]

The guys working on these lines still have skills.
An edgebander is the most complicated piece of machinery in a workshop. To run one and maintain it is a skill, even assembling a unit to keep it tidy should not be underestimated, however I accept it's not rocket science.

 

[Jacob]

One simple idea there (near beginning) is having benches at same height as machine tables, which means if they are close enough together you can easily move big sheets from machine to bench to other machine etc, right through the shop.
I've done vaguely similar in my own workshop - a long mdf bench along one wall at machine height so I can cut one end on my smallish TS sliding table, with the other on the bench, wax polished to help it slide. Not many cabinets per month though!

 

[Max Power]

Semi skilled machine operatives, must be a mind numbing job doing that day in day out.

 

[doctor Bob]

Depends how happy you are in your own head. Some people don't need or want a challenge and stuff to worry about.

 

[Jameshow]

Reminds me of uk caravans built by minimum wage guys without enough care and attention and then you wonder why they leak 1,3,5 years later!!

Cheers James

 

[Distinterior]

There are an awful lot of bare edges on those cabinets.....and who still uses hardboard backs...?? All looked a bit cheap & nasty to me!

 

[custard]

I strongly disagree with the notion that there's a hierarchy of skills, with traditional hand tool cabinet making somehow at the top and anything involving power tools or machines somehow inferior.

I trained in one of the UK's most most prestigious workshops, actually one of the world's most prestigious workshops, and I'd put my hand tool skills alongside almost anyones. But I've met plenty of people that simply leave me for dead in so many other critical aspects of furniture making.

There's a guy I know who operates a bobbin sander all day long, I can't hold a candle to his ability to kiss a curve absolutely fair for metre after metre. There are dozens of situations like that, someone who puts in thousands of hours with a particular machine and elevates their abilities way higher than the rest of us.

Ripping on a table saw is a definite skill, the fact is most custom furniture makers don't actually rip all that much, so none of us are particularly quick or even all that accurate. The most basic and junior operator in a joinery workshop might rip more in a week than a Guild Mark craftsman or woman does in a year, believe me that experience shows in the quality of their components.

I only use mechanical drawer runners a handful of times each year, so I'm really ploddy installing them, and it's a banker's bet that I'm not exploiting anything like their full potential for adjustability.

Going back to custom furniture makers, they don't even judge each other on hand tool skills. The things that really win kudos are inventing ingenious jigs or simply turning out decent quality work in double quick time.

I could go on and on, but you get the point. The many, many people I know who really are right at the top when it comes to hand tool skills, oddly they're never the ones disparaging machine or power tool skills.

 

[Doug B]

The guys working on these lines still have skills.
An edgebander is the most complicated piece of machinery in a workshop. To run one and maintain it is a skill, even assembling a unit to keep it tidy should not be underestimated, however I accept it's not rocket science.

Agreed Bob, I worked at a similar place for a year or so though the machinery wasn’t as rudimentary as some in the video. There were certainly some very clever chaps there, the guys who ran the CNCs making bespoke sized cabinets were on dam good money & made programming those machines look like rocket science to me.

 

[Alpha-Dave]

What is most impressive for me is that there is not a single fastener used in the entire construction aside from the nails to hold the back on.

There are screws for the hinges of course, but all the structural strength of the cabinet comes from dowels being pressed in to the ends of the boards, and then adhesive to hold the dowels into the panels the join to perpendicularly.

I guess it must work ok, and with the right pressing forces, it could easily be bonding the dowel into the edge of the sheet just because of heat due to friction.

 

[Jacob]

Yep. There can be a high degree of skill in some of the apparently simplest jobs. There has to be, first to make it easier for yourself and secondly to make it a bit meaningful, something you could take pride in and get a sense of achievement if things went well. I've done some crap jobs including digging a lot of big holes with pick, shovel and barrow - which when you get into it is a real challenge. In fact I still like doing it!

 

[NosmoKing]

Reminds me of uk caravans built by minimum wage guys without enough care and attention and then you wonder why they leak 1,3,5 years later!!

Cheers James

Yep. I bought one of those....

 

[furnace]

I strongly disagree with the notion that there's a hierarchy of skills, with traditional hand tool cabinet making somehow at the top and anything involving power tools or machines somehow inferior.

I trained in one of the UK's most most prestigious workshops, actually one of the world's most prestigious workshops, and I'd put my hand tool skills alongside almost anyones. But I've met plenty of people that simply leave me for dead in so many other critical aspects of furniture making.

There's a guy I know who operates a bobbin sander all day long, I can't hold a candle to his ability to kiss a curve absolutely fair for metre after metre. There are dozens of situations like that, someone who puts in thousands of hours with a particular machine and elevates their abilities way higher than the rest of us.

Ripping on a table saw is a definite skill, the fact is most custom furniture makers don't actually rip all that much, so none of us are particularly quick or even all that accurate. The most basic and junior operator in a joinery workshop might rip more in a week than a Guild Mark craftsman or woman does in a year, believe me that experience shows in the quality of their components.

I only use mechanical drawer runners a handful of times each year, so I'm really ploddy installing them, and it's a banker's bet that I'm not exploiting anything like their full potential for adjustability.

Going back to custom furniture makers, they don't even judge each other on hand tool skills. The things that really win kudos are inventing ingenious jigs or simply turning out decent quality work in double quick time.

I could go on and on, but you get the point. The many, many people I know who really are right at the top when it comes to hand tool skills, oddly they're never the ones disparaging machine or power tool skills.

Custard is spot on. Focussing on a single or small number of tasks and getting both highly competent and efficient is no mean feat and is very important in a commercial sense. Tips and tricks to simplify or tune a process is part of it and rarely acknowledged by the casual observer. Bricklaying may be repetitive, but the quality and pace of expert brickies leaves me in awe. A skill is a skill.
As for fitting mechanical drawer runners, I'm hopelessly slow

 

[Spectric]

Hi all

The objective of automation is to maximise output and minimise cost, using automated CNC machinery allows high output with low skilled labour that requires little training. The skilled positions are the ones that maintain and set the machines up so an operator only needs make a simple menu choice for a given job. These days with the modern GUI,s it is so easy to literally hold the hand of the operator and walk him through the stages needed and as they say a picture can say a thousand words. When I worked in product development we had to interface with the production operatives because design philosopy to an extent sacrificed good engineering practice in favour of manufacturing and the operators had to be able to do any given task literally in their sleep because they just switched off and worked like robots except they ate and pee'd.

 

[pe2dave]

Swapping skills for capital costs?
Makes me cringe.

 

[clogs]

I trained in the early days with a genuine BLACKSMITH......I learnt a lot.....
it's just not bashing hot metal with a big hammer.....
in those days he said "u get paid a shilling an hour to hit stuff but 9 bob an hour for knowing where and how hard to hit the stuff.....
I often think of him when working metal.....

Only prob I have found in industry is to stop the operator getting fed up and thinking of ways to Xugger up the job...

 

[Sandyn]

Everyone wants everything as cheap as possible these days and companies want to maximise profit, so share holders get good returns on their investments. We get cheap things, processes get automated, people lose their jobs. That is where the world is at. Fortunately in most automated processes, some people are still needed, but once AI is properly developed, humans will hardly be needed in manufacturing.
The future is really exciting, but very very scary.

 

[AJB Temple]

Interesting video.

I suspect on a woodworking site many of us would happily make cabinets or built ins from whatever material we favour. Personally I dislike laminated chipboard but accept that it has its place in the market.

 

[wallace]

I bet the actual work rate is far quicker than what is shown in the video.

 

[Nick_D]

They even had a machine to press the glue joints together!! Poor guy didn’t even get hit own mallet
I’m really not sure how much “skill“ is going on. It’s one thing being highly skilled at doing one thing, and another being very skilled at pushing a piece of laminated timber into an automated machine. And the people doing the feeding aren’t the ones programming the machines.
Mass produced = cheap/high margin for a reason.