Competing Worldwide

When we first started out attempting to make woodwork tools that hopefully would compete on a world basis we had far more hurdles than we expected. We had many quotes of over $250 to CNC machine a tool, that would mean a retail price of $750 for a low angle jack plane, wouldn’t work or compete. Other machinists just couldn’t do it, too complicated, too much quality required.

We determined machinists were in a few categories – rocket scientists, rough & ready, too large, too small, couldn’t reverse engineer, etc.

Then we met Jimmy & Mike in Adelaide, South Australia. They were adventurous, talented and practical, perfect for our work. They appreciated our goals, enjoyed perfection, loved competing… They were making aerospace components so they appreciated genuine rocket science…

Earlier this year they revealed they were thinking about a robot for their aerospace client. Intriguing to say the least. Well, this week, I saw it in action. Amazing. Their robot loads and unloads two of their 5 axis CNC machines using towers of racks, Astonishing for me, you can spend hours just watching it in action. It doesn’t really replace one of their gifted machinists but enables them to keep machining after hours, no humans. If required, Jimmy & Mike monitor the process on their phones remotely, as the robot works into the early hours of the morning, unattended. It took over two weeks of programming to teach the robot…

Out tools are still loaded by hand, but one day, who knows how they will be machined.

Fascinating that our tools, that are basically originally designed over 100 years ago, can now be machined with far more precision with a robot today!

The tolerances specified by Jimmy & Mike are nothing short of spectacular, giving us the opportunity to compete worldwide.

You can see the CNN robot operating on our YouTube channel.