Chris Sharp Cabinets of Lincoln has carved out a niche in the quality furniture market, particularly where complex design features are involved. The company has formed a close manufacturing partnership with solid wood specialists in the Weinig Group of companies, and uses a variety of their machines in key production areas to ensure quick-setting, fast changeovers, high precision and saving in labour.

Chris Sharp established the company with his wife Christine, in 1986, producing handmade bespoke furniture on his own. The company grew steadily and moved to Newark, where it gained a reputation for fine pine furniture. Although a fire destroyed the workshop, Chris built up the business to employ 12 people and took on Darren Kelly as production manager.

The company moved to its present, larger site in Scampton, Lincoln in 1992. It now employs 38 people and the nature of the business is changing to include machining of hardwood components – the main reason for recent business growth.

Contract machining

Today, the company makes cabinet type furniture, beds and tables, and is taking on an increasing amount of contract machining for other furniture manufacturers, providing a special service on hardwoods and laminated panels. It makes 800 units of furniture per week in up to 60 different designs using 1,000 different components. Its special strength is manufacturing small quantities of complex furniture in a versatile production facility.

The company philosophy is to work in a friendly, family atmosphere with employees, customers and suppliers. Chris Sharp has a general role, while Christine and Darren Kelly’s wife Tracy cover admin and office work and Darren is directly responsible for production. Considerable re-investment in innovative, modern machinery has been made over the past 10 years, mainly in labour-saving machines that save downtime. “I believe setting up time and labour are the most costly factors in any production facility,” says Chris Sharp, and he has clearly acted on his beliefs.

Heavy-duty moulders

Today, the company has two heavy-duty Hydromats – a 60m/min, 6,000rpm, high-speed moulder for longer runs, and a slower jobbing machine with a throughfeed up to 36m/min, with 8,000rpm spindles. Both are linked to the toolroom and served by the state-of-the-art OptiControl LogoCom measuring, tool management and organisational software. And both have interchangeable tooling.

The high-speed, six-spindle moulder is a special Hydromat Crown with jointing and outboard bearings to ensure a super multi-knife finish. It is a high specification machine with mechanical infeed and is equipped for multi-part moulding and planing; quick setting systems for short runs; special side guides for running thin material; and a computer connection to dial in special customer requirements.

The slower, seven-spindle, more versatile Hydromat 23 is for jobbing work, with the facility for splitting on the last head. Its features include heavy horsepower motors for deep hardwood mouldings and an ammeter for checking saw sharpness. It also has most of the high specification features of the Hydromat Crown to accomplish similar work. This Hydromat, however, does not have jointers and outboard bearings, so setting up the moulder is quicker, and its faster 8,000rpm spindles ensure a super single knife finish at slower feed speeds.

Tooling

Tooling for the moulders is prepared in the toolroom on the OptiControl LogoCom which has an electronic digital display connected to a computer.

The finished profile dimensions are entered in the computer. The tool data is determined optically through a magnified viewing scope and in a few seconds the computer calculates the setting data for each spindle. A data label is produced on the printer and accompanies the tooling to the moulder. The spindles are brought into position by matching the electronic digital readouts on the moulder with the setting data, transmitted automatically from the toolroom. The spindles are now adjusted to their exact working position. Set-up times are reduced by more than 50% with every tool change.

Other benefits

Other benefits include the storage of all tooling profiles and dimensions for instant recall, as well as raw material sizes, timber species, moisture content and relevant customer information. It feeds this to the moulders in the factory, making setting up of customer orders fast and easily repeatable.

Planing/moulding is the first stage of manufacture at Chris Sharp Cabinets. This is because any defects in the timber can be clearly seen before the next stage of cross-cutting and defecting.

For cross-cutting and defecting there are two Dimter saws – one is a throughfeed optimising and defecting Dimter OptiCut 204, for high-speed defecting, optimising and automatic sorting into lengths. And the other is a pushfeed OptiCut 104 mainly for cutting packs of timber in multiples, and for applications where accuracy is of paramount importance. These replaced two previously installed Dewalt saws and have provided important advantages and benefits. The saving in waste is quite considerable. It was previously 30% and is now reduced to 8-12% and means that the need for spare components is also reduced from 12% to 2%. The value of the savings is significant, because it derives from expensive, previously machined timber, where production time has already been spent. The quality of cut and high precision are other important advantages along with very useful management information on downtime, throughput, waste, total processing time, etc.

For solid wood panels, all waney edge and square edge hardwood boards, go to the Raimann KR310 optimising gang rip saw for processing.

The Raimann has proved an excellent investment. Its laser measurement system measures the width of each board, so that individual widths can be pre-programmed for best yield. The quality is such that each piece is precisely cut with a finish suitable for laminating directly from the machine. Features include high quality track with two-sided prismatic guides; two moving saws linked to ProfiCut programming, where ripping patterns can be pre-programmed; and a unique Raimann ‘quick-fix’ feature for fast adjustment and flexible cutting, without the need for mounting arbors and conventional locking spanners.

Another highly productive machine is the Contouramat Friulmac for end profiling of door fronts and door rails, with the use of a return conveyor for one-man production. The machine can also drill. It has halved Chris Sharp Cabinets’ labour cost for this particular production operation. Weinig (UK) is now the agent for Friulmac.

Finger-jointing

When Chris Sharp started to take on contract hardwood processing he became concerned at the high value of usable waste – of the order of 20% – and he felt that a finger-jointer could recover this waste and use it profitably. Once again he turned to Weinig and a GreCon finger-jointer was installed last year.

Since then a new set of options became open to the company. All off-cuts down to 150mm can now be used to make up to 6m length pieces. The finger-jointer not only satisfies customer needs for longer lengths, but also provides material that can be used for drawer sides and similar ‘hidden’ applications.

The finger-jointer is an Ultra 4 model and allows the production of two types of profiles – a horizontal or a vertical joint, for either furniture or constructional applications, with a quick changeover system from one process to the other. The machine features a scoring saw for perfect quality jointing on furniture components.

Investment in high technology is clearly paying off for Chris Sharp Cabinets. The company is attracting more orders and is keeping busy, with steady growth in turnover. Chris Sharp would like to make larger quantities of furniture units in future years and focus more on complex design work.