The joys of manufacturing and CNC machines
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
It's been eighteen months since we brought our manufacturing fully in-house. Many loudspeaker companies outsource the woodworking but we felt that for improved efficiency, quality control, adaptability and performance it was a necessary step. Now I don't want to jinx something that's finally running smoothly but I do believe we've made some huge leaps in the last month.
Using a CNC machine to cut the sheets of plywood meant we could redesign the bracing to be more effective and design the cabs to slot together neatly when being constructed, speeding the process and strengthening all the joints whilst stiffening the enclosure. However, CNC milling machines are complicated beasts and no-one was using this plywood with this machine for these purposes so we had to teach ourselves how to get it to do what we wanted to do.
After tearing out much of our hair we got the first cabs (Super Twelves) coming off the machine correctly and glueing together as designed, so then it was a question of rolling out the CNC methodology across the whole product line. Of course, nothing every runs smoothly and we've had various challenges like our plywood changing size (it went 6cm shorter so the previous patterns would no longer fit), our control box glitching and eventually failing because we were pushing it too hard, our computer proving too unreliable at providing uninterrupted and even pulses so we had to change operating system and CNC software, burning out spindle brushes and losing accuracy, losing steps in the linear feed motors, and so on, and each time it's been a detective job to work out why a cab won't go together because the panels are a few mm out.
More recently our spindle started struggling with the workload and whilst investigating more powerful spindles we found out about some more powerful linear feed motors (stronger neodymium magnets, bigger wire coils - sound familiar?!) which could be retrofitted to our machine. So we took the machine apart, fitted all the new parts, waited for some extra parts to finish the job and eventually got it running again...
And, wow! It's now moving as fast as I originally envisaged, about three times as fast as before, without any trouble at all. The new motors have so much more torque that we can drive our bit fast through the ply, keeping the chipload nice and high (bigger chips rather than finer dust) which keeps the bit cool and reduces the wear rate. Two to three cabs a day was our maximum before. Now we could do ten cabs a day if we had the manpower to load and clear the machine (and the rest of the processes!) And since the upgrade we haven't had a single error despite pushing the machine hard.
So, that's a roundabout way of saying, yes, we've struggled to build our cabs fast enough, yes, our customers have had to wait far longer than we expected, but yes, things are finally changing in a BIG way. I don't want to predict how long it'll take to clear the backlog but at the rate we're working we'll be there soon enough. Watch this space!
P.S. Thank you ever so much to every customer who has been very patient and waited far longer than they should have had to - if it wasn't for you sticking with us and holding on until we could get your cab out, we would not have been able to continue as a business. We are hugely indebted to you for your support and I hope that you all (not just those who've sent glowing feedback) feel that your cab was (or will prove to be) worth the wait, and that you enjoy using it for many many years to come.
Alex
just seen yours checking back before I posted - think you listed it as 5 months.
