Masterwood CNC machine

Our Masterwood Project CNC machining centre has improved dramatically the way we produce staircases and has allowed us to remain competitive and overcome the difficulty of attracting skilled staff. Our production has increased so much that we will have bought a second CNC machine.

With the house building market remarkably buoyant, we are expecting to notch up record turnover this year. The demand for our products continues to grow, given added impetus by the fact that some house builders are now putting up three-storey houses, which obviously require more stairs than standard size properties.

Our decision to move away from traditional methods of joinery manufacture was prompted partly by the problem of recruiting skilled staff, a situation all too common throughout the industry nationwide.

We have the Masterwood Project 320RL which is the 4.5m long bed version, ideal for handling the longest staircase components. The three axis machine features a tubeless type working table, with eight aluminium supporting bars and ten suction cups, fitted as standard. Unlike conventional beds it has no pipes that can become damaged during the machining cycle.

It’s fitted with a carousel type tool changer with eight positions for IS0 30 cones, has an X axis working stroke of 4500 mm, with a displacement speed of 100 m/min, a Y axis stroke of 1350 mm (with front router) and a Z axis workable thickness of 100mm for routing operations.

We also specified an optional twin sided head for drilling door locks and hinges. However, we're so busy producing staircases we've not been able to find time to use it on doors, which is the next step in our modernisation programme.

The new machine is used to trim, cut to size, route, mortice, and tenon virtually all the staircase components, including the strings, newel posts, kite winders and treads. It has reduced by between a third and a quarter the time it previously took using a semi- automatic Ryburn stair trencher and other traditional machines, depending on the components.

Gone is the need to draw out a full size stair layout and then to draw out the kite winders etc by hand, labour intensive tasks that could take up to 1/½ hours to carry out. It’s now all done in a couple of minutes on a CAD program by Carl Morrall in the drawing office, who from working drawings inputs the final machining requirements on to a floppy disc which is given to the machine’s operator.

The software supplied was Masterwood’s own standard Masterwork, a Windows- based program that works with any PC. Incorporating universal CAD for design work, it’s ideal for both joinery and panel products. Longwood also uses the latest Masterstair program, claimed to be the most user-friendly staircase software available in the world, which offers remarkable simplicity of programming.

The accuracy of the machine, to .01mm, is always spot on which means that our joiners can now fit a staircase together correctly first time around, with no need to send back ill- fitting components for trimming or planing. A spin-off from this is that we are benefiting from significant savings in raw materials, which is important as disposing of wood waste is now a costly business.

The CNC machine has radically altered and improved the way we approach the production of staircases. With the process now largely mechanised, we consider we are in the business of manufacturing staircases rather than making them. We supply them ready stained and lacquered, each one bubble wrapped, with only the handrail to be bolted on, just like an item of furniture, not a piece of joinery.

The long-term aim is to use the machine to build up stocks of stair components, ready to be fitted together as the orders come in, which was something that was impossible to do before.

The machine can easily be adapted to general joinery projects - for example decorative barge boards, skirtings and architrave corner blocks.