Ryan,
Yes, they are expensive, that's why I'm trying to find out if they're really worth it, or the high prices are inflated due to something else, e.g. small number of units being built in general.
Some of these cost as much as half the good cnc router, which is infinitely more versatile machine.
When I look at it, it looks like very simple machine: a spindle, simple clamp, guide roller and manually movable table on pair of rails. I'm struggling to understand why $30K for that?
I'm not that much concerned about the number of doors I plan to build, but more about the number of jobs being lost when I can't build the doors.
I think I would even be ok with this machine making no profit at all, just paying enough for itself, because the profit of the just rest of the job (cases and installation) would still be better than no job at all.
Door Shop Guy,
as you probably already guess I'm not door expert. But when I look at machines like this I somehow imagine that those arched guides could be custom cut to whatever shape one needs and I expect (probably due to my very limited experience in such matters) that various stile and rail router bits would also be available (correct me if I'm wrong), and with that the machine already exceeds most of what I could imagine, except maybe for those kind of doors that have some kind of non router-able ornaments like ropes, pointed arches and such "exotic" things.
Anyway, what I'm most interested in is speed, and I'm wondering how much is this faster than doing it with shapers and are there some jigs that could make shaper do those arched stiles.
I've only seen marketing videos for these machines on YouTube, but I know there're usually some discrepancies between real world and marketing.
DJS
Your pricing remarks are true for the rest of the world, but in this market that I'm trying to find the solution for things are usually a little bit different.
I'll write few things about it, that do not have much to do with the topic, but anyway, someone might find it interesting.
So, rental properties managers or companies (at least these that I'm involved with) are always interested in two things: low price AND short lead time. But they are interested only if those two appear simultaneously; i.e. they will not compromise on lead time for even lower price, and they will not compromise on price for even faster service.
So, you could say there's some sweet spot that works and everything else that doesn't.
So what happens when they don't get or don't find that spot?
-Nothing. They just don't do the remodeling at all, or maybe just do some smoke screen operation like repaint the cabinets, add some caulking or few screws to the areas that look like most likely could fall apart in near future and postpone taking care of that situation for some time in the future.
So, why is that so?
From what I was able to deduce while working with them, these are some of the reasons:
1) They have limited monthly/yearly budget to spend on remodeling and maintaining the property. Unless something is real emergency (like water leak, roof leak, excessive pest infestation, or the government inspectors are forcing them into something) they will not have access to additional funds. And ugly worn out kitchen that will fell apart in FEW MONTHS is not an emergency NOW.
2) They have limited time. Property managers do not think in terms of long term financial profitability, but rather short term operability, e.g. they'll often have me replace just the countertops on top of failing cabinets (if they "don't have" the money to replace whole kitchen this month), only to have me replace both those cabinets and newly installed countertops again 2-3 months later when cabinets finally fail.
If they were replacing everything the first time, and sacrifice one or two week (or even whole month) of lost rent, it would still cost them overall less then replacing first only countertops, and then both the cabinets and new countertops some time later. So, why do they do that?
Because property managers get some bonuses when they achieve high occupancy, and they are interested more in their own personal bonuses then in company's overall profit. So, they'll easily waste few thousand of company's dollars to get themselves $50 or $100 in bonuses for that month. People who could actually make better decisions usually sit in some other city or even some other state and can't have fine control over each and every project, and probably have decided that 'high occupancy goal' imposed on property managers is cheaper solution than having additional employees calculating best long term financial scenario for each and every project.
Anyway, there are lot of other thing, that are sometimes relevant and sometimes not, but these are the main ones.
On the other hand, there are also some positive aspects in doing such projects, but we can leave it for the next post/topic...