?'s for Thermwood owners

[Nick Mitchell]

I would like to hear from some T'wood owners. Specifically owners of Cabinetshop series machines such as the C40 or the new C45.

Have you been pleased with your machine?
4'x8' foot table or 5'x10'?
What vacuum system do you use?
Rolling Nest good?
Do you use aggregates? C-axis?
10hp or 18hp?

Thanks in advance. Any thoughts would be appreciated. I'm narrowing my router choice down to 3 or 4 brands at this point.

If you'd prefer, you can email me mitchwoodworking @yahoo .ca (take out the spaces)

Nick

[Bill Rutherford]

Nick,
I could not be more pleased with our Thermwood router. Simply stated, if we needed another machine tomorrow, I would not even consider anyone else. We have had our machine two years now and have not experienced one second of down time due to machine problems.

One thing that is more important then most people realise (myself included) is the technical support. If this is your first CNC then trust me you will need to have a company willing to stand behind you and help you learn. Even though Thermwood does everything possible to make the machine easy to use, you will still have many questions. Knowing you can jump on the phone or use virtual service to get immediate answers to your questions is HUGE. Even if you are just trying something new or working with a new material they are more then willing to help. Their support is second to none throughout the CNC industry and from my experience any other industry as well.

Another thing with Thermwood is that they do everything they say they will do. The machine was shipped when promised, the tech arrived for the install right on schedule, and we were up and running in short order. If you do need parts, Thermwood keeps them in stock (unlike a lot of the import companies) and ships Next Day Air so you have the part the following morning.

As for the rest of your questions, we are using a 4' x 8' table with a Busch 15HP vacuum pump and a 10HP spindle. We have had good luck with the Busch and can hold parts as small as 4\" x 6\" as long as we onion skin. As for the table size, our products have been designed to fit well on 4' x 8' sheets although as we do more custom machining I am finding that a 5' x 10' may have been a better choice.

Rolling nest is a great peice of software. The ability to generate nests and machine code without having to walk back and forth to the office will save you many pairs of sneakers We went from a rack full of scrap material to literally a half dozen pieces leaning against a wall (we only work in two colors of melamine) We build a stock line so I have all of the files for our entire product line stored on the machines hard drive and the operator simply calls up the products we are building that day, scans in any scrap left over from the last run, nests, prints labels and runs the parts.

Simply putyou don't really have a choice to make, Thermwood is the ONLY way to go!!

[Grady Robertson]

Nick,

We have a model 40, 5' X 10' table, 18HP router, 40HP Trivani pump, typewriter tool changer. We run MasterCam, ArtCam and ecabinets. The link to the machine is seamless. I like the fact that when I encounter a problem, I just make one call to Thermwood and get it taken care of.

I was like you are 2 1/2 years ago. I knew nothing about CNC. I made a trip to Dale to see the equipment in person and meet the people. In my mind, it's the people behind the equipment that are important and you will not find any better that those at Thermwood.

Feel free to call or email me
Grady Robertson
866-863-3935
grady@woodgraphix.com
http://www.woodgraphix.com

[Rob Davis]

Nick,

We've had our CS40 running since March. We run ECabinets and MasterCam. We would echo the above comments and feel that we made the right choice. We spent about 9 months trying to talk ourselves into a CNC Router and looking at different ones. I have a file full of literature on different brands of routers and if you want it you can have it because if we buy another, it will be a Thermwood. We actually made up our mind at the MidWest Expo after looking at about 35 differetn versions of router there. We felt Thermwood was a hands down choice. Service, delivery, etc all were just as stated in the other responses. We have had to make soem calls for questions on the unit and we have gotten it resolved very quickly.

One big seller for us was that we were CNC and software ignorant (we are woodworkers!) and Thermwood offers the complete package. No other programs to buy and try to make interface. It was all there and proven out. Rolling nest is good and while we have a few more than 6 pieces of scrap the wall, we will eventually get there as we figure it out.

Best of all was that we were cutting parts the day the service man left our installation. We had been to training and used the training to design some of our parts and put it right to use. Don't skip the training, it is vital.

Feel free to call anytime at 765-987-8156 if I can offer any other insight.

[Nick Mitchell]

Thank you Bill, Grady and Rob. I appreciate your input.