Custom Wood Working: Styling Shutters in Bermuda

CNC Automated Carpentry uses low-cost CNC technology to produce intricate wood components.

The CNC router allows the company to efficiently produce a host of complex woodworking components.

Growing demand for custom woodwork

In Bermuda, nearly every house has shutters to protect against storms and to provide shade in the heat of the day. Since homeowners seek attractive shutters, highly-stylized designs with complicated cross-sections and decorative touches are common. Customers often bring samples into local woodworking shops and are shocked when they learn the cost and lead-time involved in turning their ideas into reality.

Vesely and his partners saw an opportunity to build a business by using CNC technology to meet the needs of these potential customers.

After researching routers, they purchased the Techno CNC Machine from Techno-isel. The machine performs production routing and drilling on a wide variety of materials including wood, plastic, MDF, solid surfacing materials and nonferrous metals. The machine price included CAM software capable of both creating designs and importing them from nearly every CAD system.

CNC router easily produced complex jobs

Since installing the new machine, Vesely and his partners have kept it busy with nearly continuous use, producing shutters, cabinet components, countertops and a wide range of other custom woodwork.

“The big thing that the new machine brings to the table is its ability to produce any imaginable shape in minimal time,” he said. “So we can now quote lower prices and shorter delivery times on the more complicated jobs.”

Vesely said that he is now able to accommodate nearly every customer that walks into his door looking for custom shutters.

“I am now producing more complicated shutter patterns than were ever possible in the past,” he said. “We make gothic top, true half circle top, shallow arch top, and many other varieties of shutters in both operable and stationary flavors. Whatever the customer walks in the door with we can accommodate it.”

The technology has allowed the company to produce a range of other complicated component designs, Vesely said.

“We are also producing fretworks that would have been impossible in the past,” he said. “I recently did a fretwork pattern that had over 1000 cutouts. It would have been a nightmare by hand but it was not a problem designing it on the computer and cutting it on the CNC router. We can also add contours and accents to create a 3D effect, which is virtually impossible with power tools. We recently finished a very complicated 24 by 36 inch job for which we charged $3500 per piece and the customer was tickled pink with the results.”