Woodworking News
(May, 2017)
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Microvellum unveiled its latest release of Fluid Designer at the KBIS 2017 trade show in Orlando, Florida. The product is a kitchen,bath and closet design solution that provides users with the tools to lay out, render, animate and present interior spaces. The Blender-based software is currently being sold on Microvellum’s website as a one-time purchase, or a monthly subscription of $80 per month. The Fluid Designer free edition is open-source software that is built on Blenders 3D software (v2.78). Fluid Designer provides users with unrestricted access to the complete functionality and power of Blender, including the Cycles Render Engine for photo-realistic images, 3D modeling, realistic materials animations and more. Blender is a free and open-source 3D creation suite that supports modeling, rigging, animation, simulation, rendering, compositing and motion tracking, including video editing. |
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The new G2 Combo lets a woodshop enjoy all the benefits of using a hydraulic chuck for router bits and a hydraulic arbor for profile tools, at the same time. Perfectly centered and balanced, it delivers quick and easy tool changes independently for each router bit or profile tool. The G2 Combo lets the woodworker optimize a tool's design for maximum performance and cost effectiveness. One can also use reduction sleeves in the 16 mm chuck, and run several smaller, frequently used, shaft sizes. The company, ETP Transmission AB, has been in business for more than 35 years. |
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New Jersey-based Charles G. G. Schmidt & Co. has taken all of the tools they manufacture to produce flooring and put them in a single, easy-to-read brochure. Whether a shop runs a shaper of a moulder, the brochure has the cutters and heads to produce what you need, including brazed cutters, corrugated back knives and heads, dedicated insert-style cutters for long production runs, the company's line of 2-knife and 4-knife corrugated heads, and HSK heads for today's newest moulders. The new #1100 catalog is also now available, and can be viewed online. |
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Carbide 3D now offers a free 5-day email course in the basics of CNC. Just visit the site, scroll down to the bottom of the page and sign up. This is an engineering and product design firm based in Torrance, California that has been around for about a decade. It builds a couple of small, very simple CNC machines. The company's size and expertize are ideally suited to the needs of a woodshop that is looking to transition into CNC for making short runs of accents or small parts. It's also a very useful resource for schools, colleges and technical institutions. The company currently sells an enclosed desktop machine, the Nomad 883 Pro, for $2,499 (shown at right, top), and a kit for a 33" x 33" cutting platform router for $1,499. The entry-level Shapeoko 3 router kit (at right, bottom) starts at $1,099. In addition, the team packages its own easy-to-learn design software package, called Carbide Create, with all of its machines. |
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Advantage Trim & Lumber, with mills in Florida, North Carolina, California, New York and Brazil, has just added a large array of turning blanks to its inventory. Some of the lathe species now available are Australian beefwood, bishopwood, eucalyptus, camphor, cocobolo, Indian rosewood, jave plum, lacewood, live oak, monkey pod, Norfolk Island pine, silk oak, amboyna burl, kingwood, tulipwood, Mexican bocote, Honduran rosewood pen blanks, pink ivory, African blackwood and briar burl. |
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A. Lewis Manufacturing Co. in Baltimore, Maryland, has recently introduced a couple of dozen new moldings, two of which are shown at right. The company produces embossed moldings in a very large array of styles and sizes (an online catalog is available), and all products are produced to order with no minimum requirements. Moldings are available in most Appalachian hardwoods plus alder, mahogany and pine. Lewis also manufactures custom profiles, and produces rosettes and a number of rope moldings. Most patterns can be embossed in commonly used kiln dried cabinet woods, in random lengths from 5-14 feet unless otherwise specified. Furniture builders might also want to scroll down to the themed millwork near the end of the catalog. |
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A new exhibitor at IWF (booth 1425) is a company called Rubberwood USA. With warehousing in High Point, N.C., it is a subsidiary of Malaysia-based Jayakas Corp and its only commodity is wood harvested and processed from rubber trees (hevea brasiliensis). According to the company, this species can be used for almost any interior application and is a cost-effective replacement for maple. A hardwood, it has a slightly yellowish appearance with open grain texture. It is eco-friendly and readily accessible, will resist re-absorbing moisture after it had been kiln dried, and has good staining properties. The species can be found extensively in South East Asia, in large part because of a history of plantation farming for rubber latex, and it is marketed under several more attractive-sounding names such as Malaysian Oak, White Mahogany and Hevea Wood. The company's website seems to have some glitches, but there's contact info at the bottom of each page. |
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NEXTech Machinery in North Carolina has introduced three new lines of edgebanders designed for simple, heavy-duty, trouble-free operation. The EB200 Series features a simple, straightforward setup and heavy-duty, well-engineered components like a strong, heat-treated, solid frame, which guarantees stability and provides excellent finish quality of the final product. The EB300 Series (shown) is a heavy-duty, simple-to-operate edgebander designed to complement woodworking shops of any size. It is scalable, allowing the addition of pre-milling machining units, top and bottom trimming units and scraping units, as well as precision horizontal and/or vertical grooving. And the EB400 series includes a corner rounding unit with two motors, optional precision grooving, pre milling, addition trimming stations and other units. |
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| The new Multi-Purpose 90 is a heavy-duty, five-axis CNC designed for high-speed trimming and pattern machining. It's aavailable in single or dual moving aluminum tables and is capable of full 5-axis simultaneous motions with extremely fast accelerations. It is 3D laser-calibrated to assure the most accurate absolute positioning and repeatability. There's a 12HP HSD tool change spindle (3,000-24,000 RPM) and larger spindle sizes are available. Single aluminum table sizes available are 5'x'5, 5'x'10' and 10'x5'. The dual tables are 5'x'5, 5'x'10 and 5'x12'. The Multi-purpose 90 is capable of 3500 IPM, and there's continuous C-Axis Rotation. It has an impact-resistant head, a moving aluminum table and a fixed gantry with 24" Z as standard (available up to 60"). There are Siemens Intelligent Servo Drives throughout and it comes with Thermwood's QCore SuperControl. It is also equipped with 5-Axis chip collection and a 10-position rotary tool changer. |
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| The Cabinotch® full access Cabinet Library has just been made available to cabinet and furniture woodshops that design with KCD software. This is a complete array of cabinets and parts that are manufactured by Cabinotch and can be dropped into a KCD kitchen, bath or office design with pricing and ordering info attached. Woodshops using KCD need to have the 'Maintain KCD Automatically' checkbox checked to access the library. To do so, go to Help, About KCD and then look in the bottom left hand corner of that dialog box. Or one can click on the Online Update option under Help in the File Menu. If a designer is unsure about whether he/she has received the update, look at the splash screen when KCD opens: a banner will indicate the library's presence. The package includes integrated 3D design, pricing and ordering - plus 100% American made 3/4" veneer core hardwood plywood construction. Cabinotch is located in Owensboro, Kentucky. |
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