Yani in building mode... he *** at drawing and as accuracy goes he needs a computer. A pencil snapper that can't draw a straight line. Lucky for the tools, like a laser level.
A router "look at those oh so cute joins"
So I did a month of homework and found a few things that are interesting and curious.
https://www.mozaiksoftware.com/
Every wonder how these kitchen companies do the software? Do they draw it up on Autocad from home grown templates?
NUP the whole thing is a package from shop front to shop back.
"Exports to Paperless Shop" It is a parts list but I suspect it includes billing components.
https://kcdsoftware.com/doors-plus/
If doors and drawers are your company’s specialty, KCD Software’s Doors Plus is a stand-alone, template design software to communicate with your nested based CNC router.
Hundreds of templates are included in the software like doors, drawer fronts and dovetail drawer boxes. It’s also easy to create your own one-of-a-kind custom templates. Parametric tool paths can be assigned for your multiple tool operations. Create your own custom libraries for doors, drawers, wine racks, fluted pilasters, valances and more for traditional and CNC manufacturing.
Doors Plus includes over 300 ready-to-use custom component templates. The order-entry system makes it easy to enter your custom items and modify details on the fly. Doors Plus gives you more custom product capacity, flexibility and efficiency than ever before.
What's interesting is the narrow vertical market and the end to end nature of the software.
Sign manufacture has moved that direction about a decade ago. Hand held computer guided gear you just need an SVG file and a printer.
Computer aided routing tables have been used in sign companies for over 30 years. Our company started using them in the late 1980's. We recently bought a new 5' X 10' Multicam table. Full service custom sign companies still have to design lots of items from scratch and fabricate at least some of what they build in-house. I do not feed our routing tables clip art merely grabbed from some library of pre-fab sign designs. The only things I get to re-use are standardized signs for a company with multiple or many locations. I'll also re-use and modify items like electrical section detail drawings of things like channel letters when a city's sign code require those kinds of drawings to get an installation permit.
Some bottom feeder sign companies will hire anyone with a pulse to try to do design work. But to productive or actually good at the job sign design does require some real artistic talent and design sensibility, not to mention a grasp of geometry. A clip art library of pre-fab signs isn't going to bail out someone with no talent.
Wholesale companies who manufacture items like aluminum extrusion cabinets have their own semi-automated setups to mass produce parts. They'll have libraries of computer files they re-use like the templates Yani mentioned in his post.
As for hand-held devices, none are replacing full fledged PCs any time soon. I do own and use an iPad Pro (with an Apple Pencil), but it is a niche device to supplement design work. It's great for on-screen drawing tasks, but it falls short as a full-blown computer. Our routing tables, digital printers and channel letter return machine are all connected to regular desktop PCs. It may be technically possible to drive those things using a portable tablet or even a smart phone. However, that invites the user to leave the routing table unattended, which really isn't a good idea. S*** happens.
I'm talking about hand held computer driven cutters. It's really decent technology, my wood worker vendor wanted to cut numbers and other decorations for a clock project, I'll dig up some images. I cleaned up the art just like would have been needed for a CNC.
The SVG export gets entered into software that prints out a print to follow that you tape to the media, the device has a screen you follow. It indicates direction changes needed.
We cut numbers, decorations and even the gears for the clock works. All from a $500 device and a little file prep knowledge.
I've had contour cuts done for broken sign faces cut with it, great new technology.
I think Bobby miss3ed the point completely.
"As for hand-held devices, none are replacing full fledged PCs any time soon."
I get it because I've seen them before.
Computer driven hand held router... it's a pretty hard thing to imagine if you haven't seen it before.
https://youtu.be/HBzPs0CRyfU
Yani said:I think Bobby miss3ed the point completely.
No. I didn't. David said the sign industry is moving in the direction of these hand held routers. That's not true. A device like a Shaper Origin may be great for doing wood-working tasks. But in a commercial sign company that kind of device is not a substitute at all for a real routing table and software to completely control the router bit along the cutting path as well as the plunge depth.
My deepest apologies :) It's not for lots of things.
If you need a thing so big that it doesn't go on a router table, then a jigsaw would likely be good enough.
It's not for me either. I don't want to become a working part of the router.
So I have a pro question...
I see laying a mask over the timber to be routed makes it easy to color the routed area without hitting the face.
My question is, what is available as a cheap stick on mask to cover a 8' X 4' sheet?
Sorry I started this thread in such a weird place, as in, apparel and...
My post was insufficiently detailed. My sign vendors are moving toward devices that are software and also task specific. As an example the vendor who only does light weight channel letters, cloud signs and the graphics they require. I have one that only mixes custom paint colors and will paint materials. One does only water jet cutting now. We may have 30 different vendors.
Then there's the vendor who put in the hand held cutter for spot jobs. When his cutting tables are busy he can use it to make repair stuff. For some reason there's a few nearby malls that have there over hangs out a bit far and the trucks like regularly smashing a letter or two.
What is designated as a sign is a broad definition. We have moved entirely toward only manufacturing custom signs and what I call sticker work.
Due to downward pricing demands we buy everything else, stick built rectangles, squares circles, what some call cloud signs, all channel letters and variable data signs.
HANDS DOWN all these signs can be manufactured and delivered to me, either to the job site or our shop for less than I can buy the material.
Variable data has become such a PITA due to (IMO) necessary regulation and downward pricing I won't discuss them with clients except for mall monument signs.
I'm just channel surfing and up comes Grant from BlackMagic flogging software on a commercial station in paid advertisements for software they give away for free.
That's not normal behaviour. He must have some particular reason for spending money building market share for something that is free. Are such adverts appearing in the US? It's got the smell of building up to list the company.
Was it on television? If so I didn't see it I only stream commercial free, run dvd/blu-ray or crank out music.
I just got a Fluence turntable for our vinyl and I working on replacing our real collectable vinyl with CD.