Applications of engraving milling machine

The demand for products made from natural wood is only increasing - these are classics that will never lose relevance. People will not refuse high-quality wooden furniture, elegant souvenirs, carved frames, musical instruments, toys, etc. In addition, today there is no need for large and heavy equipment. Similar functions in modern production are performed by compact desktop milling machines with computer numerical control (CNC). In this article, using the example of a small starting budget of 150,000 rubles, we will look at how to overcome the profitability threshold and profitable topics for a woodworking business using CNC machines in 2021.

What can be made on a CNC milling machine

Modern woodworking machines are multifunctional. You can not only turn a part on them in full compliance with the dimensions, but also make an engraving and cut out a relief. Using a machine, you can make carvings that resemble wooden lace from sheet materials. There is no human factor in the operation of the machine; the drawings stored in the computer will be reproduced with high accuracy.

A lot depends on the choice of quality equipment. When the master is confident that the equipment works 24/7 and produces high-quality products, then no competition is scary and you can safely scale the business.

How much do you need to invest at the start?

The initial investment depends on the range of work performed and specialization. With a narrow list of services, you can get by with an inexpensive machine model and a minimum of tools. The costs in this case will be 150 thousand rubles, of which:

• To purchase a machine you will need at least 100 thousand rubles.
• For the purchase of equipment for processing materials - 10 thousand rubles.
• To pay for the rent of the premises - 30 thousand rubles.
• For advertising – 10 thousand rubles.

Current expenses will include: purchase of consumables, payment of utility bills, rent, advertising, which will amount to about 40 thousand rubles.

For greater productivity, you will need a complex machine model costing 200 thousand rubles. and equipment with furniture for 25 thousand rubles. Monthly expenses will also increase to 100 thousand rubles.

Having suitable premises and tools and purchasing used equipment will allow you to save. When purchasing a machine, study its technical and operational characteristics and operational capabilities. Choose equipment from reliable manufacturers who are responsible for the quality of the product.

What goods can be produced on the machine?

Wood is a malleable material. Many types of machines can easily work with wood. If you plan to work with various materials, it is worth buying a universal machine. It will cost more than working only with wood.

A mini-machine for the simplest operations can be purchased at a price of 200,000 rubles. A model with a large number of functions costs at least 300 thousand rubles. But the more powerful the machine, the faster it will pay for itself due to the large capacity and high quality of the products produced. For example, a CNC turning and milling machine WATTSAN M1 1325 RD.

It has many advantages:

• Working surface 130×250 cm.
• The weight of the machine is 1,000 kg, which eliminates vibration during operation.
• There is water cooling, which makes it possible to work without interruption for a very long time.
• The positioning accuracy is 0.05 mm, and the spindle power is 3 kW, such parameters are typical for professional equipment.

WATTSAN M1 1325 RD is a powerful and versatile machine. Scope of application from simple woodworking functions to jewelry engraving work on wood, metal and plastic.

The price of this model is more than 750 thousand rubles. Since it has a very wide scope of application, the costs can be recouped within a few months. Compared to cheaper analogues, you can make parts for a carved table on a WATTSAN CNC machine in just a few hours.

Here are the areas that a carpentry shop will always have an advantage when working with:

1. Orders for mass curved cutting of chipboard, plywood, MDF

An excellent niche for a beginning carpenter and quick money for a CNC machine. It is by completing orders for private cutting in the beginning that it is easiest to earn money.

The scheme is simple: the delivered workpiece must be cut and given to the client. Sometimes paint it. All.

Pros: the number of cutters is minimal, there are no problems with the availability of material in the warehouse. Clients can be sought through regular advertising of this service.

1. Using this equipment, you can produce various parts

These are primarily shaped wooden balusters with various ornaments, as well as wooden columns. They can be sold via the Internet or under contract in construction markets.

— Baluster price from 150 rubles

— Columns from 500 (depending on the complexity of the product)

Source material: from 9,000 rub . per cubic meter of timber.

The price will depend on the type of wood, usually pine is used.

Let's calculate the profit in the production of balusters:

10,000 rubles is the price of a cubic meter.

From this quantity, even taking into account possible waste, you will get 360 products at a minimum price of 150 rubles.

It turns out 54,000 rubles. In this case, the difference between the purchase of material and sale: 44 thousand. This figure will depend on the region where the lumber is purchased, the selling price and the complexity of the work. The profit will depend on how many products are sold per month. We will tell you how to organize an uninterrupted flow of clients in this area in the next article.

1. Production of souvenirs

Another idea is the production of souvenirs. It can be:

carved wooden vases;

• caskets;
• wall relief panels;
• coffee and lamber tables;
• picture frames;
• figurines and garden sculptures.

The net profit will be much greater than in the previous case. The work is much more complex, and the result can be close to a work of art. In the end, you can take some antique or museum exhibits as a sample.

Solid maple for the production of figurines will cost 45,000-50,000 rubles per cubic meter. Maple is considered a valuable species, so the price is significantly higher than for solid pine or aspen. The price of a figurine or carved panel in this case will range from 1,000 to 50 thousand rubles . Therefore, the profit is incomparably higher than in the manufacture of balusters.

1. Furniture manufacture

The purchase price for a cubic meter of wood will be from 9,000 rubles if you buy pine. But for premium products you will need oak wood, the cost of which per cubic meter is from 42,000 rubles .

If we take a carved table made of this wood as an example, you will need no more than 0.1 m2.

The price for the material will be 4,200 rubles , and in the case of complex threads it can be sold for at least 20-25 thousand .

The maximum cost is practically unlimited. For example, in online stores, standard antique tables cost from 50,000 rubles.

Room

organize a mini carpentry workshop in your garage or a separate room in the local area if you live outside the city or have a dacha. In the absence of such an opportunity, suitable premises can be rented.

Required area: 20-40 square meters . The room must meet fire safety requirements, be heated and have forced ventilation. When expanding production, additional space will be needed for storage and drying of products.

Business plan for a carpentry workshop

You need to think through everything in detail. Determine in advance: the target audience for which the products are produced, initial costs, monthly revenue, the period during which it is planned to recoup the investment.

At first you can work as a self-employed person, but then, in order to be able to receive large orders with a signed contract, you will need a stamp and a legal invoice. You will have to register a legal entity: individual entrepreneur or LLC.

Think about your market. To whom will the products be sold, are sales planned via the Internet or will the product be given to the store on commission. If sales are carried out via the Internet with minimal investment, you will need to invest at least 30,000 rubles to create an online store and order contextual advertising.

To work in a “carpentry” you must have the necessary equipment:

1. CNC machine (from RUB 220,000)
2. Wood moisture meter (10 thousand rubles);
3. Hand and electric tools: a couple of grinding machines, a hand router, shuriki, a compressor, a miter saw, etc. (50-70 thousand rubles);

Let's look at each point in more detail:

1. Analyze the market and determine the target audience. Due to the appearance of plastic windows at one time, the work of carpenters faded into the background in the market, but now wood products are again gaining popularity around the world. People are returning to natural materials and demand is only increasing. And another piece of advice: don’t be afraid of competition - it’s an indicator of demand. Produce higher quality products in a shorter time frame, don’t skimp on high-quality modern machines - and the client will come to you.
2. What can be produced in a carpentry workshop. In the carpentry workshop it is possible to produce a wide range of products. To begin with, you can stop at one option and start a narrow-profile business, and over time expand the range. The most popular products ordered from woodworking are: Window blocks. 2. Doors. 3. Flights of stairs. 4. Verandas and gazebos. 5. Furniture, etc. Large enterprises will not be crushed by serious competition, and the average workshop can easily withstand it.
3. Production technology and skills. Next, you need to decide who will work - the owner himself or the workers. But know your business, constantly improve your skills. This will allow you to be “in trend” and remain in a leading position in the market.
4. Workshop space. If you plan to launch a small workshop with one or two employees, you can choose a room of 20-40 square meters. m. But it must be heated and with forced ventilation. Also, the “carpentry” must meet fire safety standards. If you want to set up large-scale production, you will need a room with a warehouse and drying.
5. Staff. A large workshop with employees can be defined as a medium-sized business, but it is important to understand that continuous production must be established. Only in this case will the business quickly pay for itself and begin to generate good profits. The following personnel positions will need to be organized: 1 director; 1 technologist; 1 workshop foreman; 2 CNC machine operators; 3 carpenters; 5 apprentices and laborers. As a result, about 375 thousand rubles are needed monthly to pay for labor, taking into account social contributions and taxes - this amount grows to 500 thousand. You can start working according to the principle “how much you earn, so much you receive,” but such a system is only suitable for starting a business.
6. Advertising. In order for the business to flourish and gain momentum, it is necessary to launch advertising, otherwise potential clients simply will not know about the existence of the workshop. Even if the owner himself works without employees, he still needs to invest in advertising for an uninterrupted flow of orders. You can use any options - social. networks, ad sites, leaflets in supermarkets, etc.
7. Investment and return on investment. The costs and the time it takes to pay off will depend on the size of the workshop. If this is a small “carpentry” shop in which the owner is also a master, then you will need to invest from 100 to 400 thousand rubles. When renting premises, costs will increase, and the payback period will increase accordingly.

Summary: carpentry products have a good sales premium - about 40%, so with a good start and development, an average workshop will pay for itself in six months. The larger the enterprise, the longer the period will be, but the income will be significantly higher.

First launch and first bummer

The machine also requires a computer. I found an old Pentium4 with an LPT port in my bins. Being a Linux person at heart, I chose CNC Linux (https://www.linuxcnc.org/) as the control software. The distribution package was quickly downloaded/installed. With some excitement I turned on the toggle switch, the machine responded with an optimistic buzz.

This is the future, it’s already here! I press Reset and try to move the carriage using the cursor keys. This is where the first bummer happened: everything works great on the Y and Z axes, but there are serious problems with X. The fact is that in my machine there are two stepper motors on the X axis (one each on the right and left guide) and when I tried to move, one of them was spinning, and the second stood dead in place. Thus, the native config that came with the machine did not work in the CNC Linux environment.

The next few hours were spent studying forums and smoking docks. But the maximum that was achieved was that both steppers moved, but they did it reluctantly and at different speeds. Judging by the uncharacteristic sound and the way the portal twitched, at some point, I realized that at this rate I would soon break this expensive piece of hardware to hell, and by force of will I stopped experiments with CNC Linux.

Current business ideas for woodworking on CNC machines in 2021

In 2021, the demand for wood products is not falling, even despite the unstable epidemiological situation. Yes, the tourism sector has sunk, so making souvenir wooden nesting dolls for tourists is not the best idea. But people still need good furniture for their apartment or bathhouse, they will raise children and buy them environmentally friendly wooden educational toys, and they will not stop giving each other original gifts. Here are examples of marginal ideas on which owners of CNC machines can make money in 2021:

1. Chairs carved from plywood, high chairs for children to grow into. The selling price is over 3,000 rubles. In production, they are not the simplest, but quite popular; if you work on the topic of branding or arrange supplies to large retail chains, you can earn more than one million a month from this.
2. Cut wood to order. The easiest way to make money with a CNC milling machine. Essentially, you rent out a milling machine, you don’t have to invent anything, they give you an order, you enter a program into the milling machine and at the end you deliver the finished product to the customer’s request. Disadvantage: sometimes experience in designing and creating layouts is required, since customers come with a specific task but without a layout. Plus: there are many such tasks, but few proposals.
3. Decorative clocks, stands, branded boxes. The souvenir niche is always in demand, the main thing is to be in trend and offer current ideas for corporate events.
4. Original designer products made of plywood: shelves, panels, stands, etc. Minimum level of competition, product in demand. Cons: you will need a constant supply of plywood for all occasions; time costs for developing a pilot model.
5. Organizers made of plywood for cosmetics, newspapers and other small items. Bestsellers in major stores. Simple, inexpensive, easy to produce, the only thing is that you need high-quality raw materials of the same density to minimize grinding.
6. Bar paraphernalia: boards for shot glasses, coffee, etc. (tree). Customers: both small cafes and large chain bars. Pros: easy to manufacture - sometimes one sharp cutter is enough. Cons: quality of wood and its constant availability.
7. Organizers for phones, stationery and pens. A very popular and in-demand niche, considering that everyone has cell phones.

Purchase

The price was stinging and I was no longer sure whether I wanted these sacrifices.
But chance helped: quite unexpectedly, they paid me for an old project that I had long ago given up on. The amount approximately corresponded to the cost of the machine. This was a sign from above; I placed an order on the same day and transferred 50% of the cost to the manufacturer’s account. A month later I went to pick up my device. The company was located on the territory of some factory. It seems that the demand for CNC in Moscow is good: in addition to my machine, there were a dozen smaller ready-made machines in the corridor.

Production of structural parts on a CO2 laser machine

Yes, we finally reached my favorite category, which could be called “Miscellaneous”, but I don’t dare call it that.

For example, in a device that was developed in our company, the temporary mount is made of acrylic.

And this, for example, is a holder for test tubes.

In this video I am torturing our VIRAND HOBBY 50 Watt on 8 mm plywood. I don’t remember what the part was needed for.

And this wonderful tractor is made on a VIRAND HOBBY 4040 machine

This is a set of rubber gaskets. Often used in plumbing. Guess what it was made with? That's right, on a laser machine.

My favorite sticky 3D map of St. Petersburg from the 18th century.

Engraving of glasses, glasses, wine glasses, glass on a CO2 laser machine

In this case, first you need to acquire rotary axes. Probably the most convenient would be a cam rotary axis, however, it should be taken into account that closed cylindrical objects, as well as glasses and wine glasses with sharply changing diameters, cannot be engraved on it. For these purposes, a roller rotary axis is better. Purchases are usually made in IKEA stores. (This is not an advertisement). By the way, customers who order engraving on glasses are most concerned about the fact that the inscription may be erased in the dishwasher. Therefore, if you plan to engage in this field, you will have to dispel this myth.

Cam Rotary Axis for Laser Machine

Possible business problems and risks

Since the machine is controlled by numerical control, the operator practically does not take part in its operation. Therefore, the influence of the human factor is not relevant for this business. Common risks include:

• Material defects or poor quality: purchasing from a regular, reputable supplier will help you avoid the problem
• Increased competition: high quality products, attractive prices, additional services, and product exclusivity will help minimize the risk
• Lack of demand: indicates insufficient marketing activities, incorrectly chosen niche or pricing

With the right approach to business, risks can be avoided or their impact can be minimized.

The peculiarity of the business is that without ensuring stable sales volumes and established infrastructure, production should not be expanded. It is better to consolidate success by developing it, improving the quality of products, establishing production chains with partners, and retaining customers.