Walk into a furniture workshop with fewer than fifteen staff and you’ll probably still find a panel saw from the 1990s. It works. It’s paid for.
The guy who runs it has been doing so since before the apprentices were born. So why are so many of these shops suddenly writing cheques for automated beam saws and nesting CNC routers?
The answer isn’t what the machine salespeople claim. It’s not about speed, not really. It’s about something far less glamorous: consistency, labor availability, and the brutal math of material waste. [Read more…] about Why Automated Cutting Lines Are Winning Over Small Furniture Workshops