Hello everyone.
I'm looking for some advice on choosing a beam saw and ptp versus a cnc router. We currently use a cnc router but it is a hobby machine and we are ramping up production beyond its capabilities and have the option to switch gears if needed.

For a brief overview of what we do. We build pretty standard cabinets. Both faceframe and frameless and our primary focus is large multi family new construction. So pretty large orders of cabinets.

Our production line can currently produce about 40 cabinets a day but it is taxing on the cnc and maintenance is getting out of hand.
Our production goal is 150-250 cabinets a day.
We are at the point of upgrading and have the ability to chose either path.

Any advice on which way to go would be very helpful and if you have any recommendations on Machines I would love to hear them.

Thank you in advance.

I ran a beam saw and ptp set up for 6 years, then switched to nested base and have been doing that for 10 years. I’m a big fan ousted base for a lot of reasons. We do mostly closets, nest in drawer parts and everything thing else. When I switched over I did a time study and looked at how many times we handled parts in each process. Full sheet to loaded n the van as many as 36 steps, nested base 11 steps/touches.
The beam saw is famous for stacking sheets. Yes it can blast out a bunch of parts, if you need a bunch of parts that are all the same size.. when you get to single sizes it’s not that fast. Then you have to handle that big batch of parts.
With cnc, you have parts come off at a steady pace and can be fed right into the bander at a steady rate. You can nest cabinet parts in order so with in a few sheets you can be building parts.
Space is the other thing, beam saw takes up a huge footprint and then you you have the ptp as well.
You can generally get by with less people with nested base, single operator can run cnc and feed parts into bander.
Downside of nested base, generates more sawdust, some parts don’t optimize as well because of the bit width, you can’t do horizontal drilling on it.

I guess like mentioned, you have some considerations to think of, what’s your budget? How much space do you have? What is your production goals next year, 5 years from now, 10 years from now.

If you want to bang out boxes. A nested cnc is not the way to go. It is an amazing machine, it is very efficient to do boxes and a huge variety of other tasks for a smaller to medium shop.

To crank out boxes for a larger shop a beam saw is the way to go, and you supplement it with a vertical machining Center,

So for space I have about 50 wide by 100 long. But that needs to fit the cutting machine. Either the saw or cnc, the ptp if needed, edgebander and a small staging area. I have other storage for sheet good coming in and cut parts going out.

Budget is around 200k

5 yr goal is 500 cab a day
10 yr is 1000+ cab a day
Surely we'll need more space in that time frame

We typically build these multi family projects by unit type so it's easier to sort into a single pallet and assemble later.
My thought is being able to stack 3-5 tall we could simple make 3-5 units at once depending on the stack height.

I understand that more hands will be needed to run the extra ptp and probably the edgebander. But if the production can out weigh those costs then I think it would be worth having a few extra guys.

Any idea how many sheets one of these beam saws can cut with a decent operator.
Obviously there are tons of variables but just an average would be a good starting point.

Thanks for the feed back already

Also I should note. We VERY rarely do anything custom. Majority is very large runs of cabinets.

There is a good article in woodworkingcanada.com called maximizing your shop performance.

If you place the stack of panels in front of a cnc router with boring and a tool changer, and it’s coming cut and drilled, then banding then assembly with hardware some hardware, and then maybe doweling something parts, a few steps of handling the panels is eliminated

Before you buy anything - think about printing/placing labels, loading, unloading, and trying do as much as you can in one spot.

Huge discussion over automation at CMA, there’s only so much time and money that a lot of us have, so each time you buy, research to what that next item can do.

We are looking at a cnc with a panel stacker but that might mean I cut a hole and put a new door into our building, or not. Maybe a new building

What I do know is recently we put casters on assembly benches, now assemble and roll right into a box truck or semi. For 400 bucks we eliminated a ton of steps, cabinets being on the floor having to be walked around and so on.

Anyway, look at the machine(s) and your process. Have you thought about lockdowel ?

We used to cut on a saw them go to a ptp, and we were very fast, but the cnc router is much better “through put” for us