A handcrafted furniture maker which lists the Prince of Wales among its clients has chosen a Masterwood CNC machining centre to spearhead a new venture.
Hutchfield Furniture, run by Richard Hutchfield at Chatham, is looking to the Winner 2.4S machine to batch produce an egg-shaped mobile office desk, a prototype of which is on trial with a major building society
Mr Hutchfield, who has 25 years experience as a fine furniture maker, said he decided to develop a standardised wood based product to provide a consistent cash flow, as crafting bespoke furniture is not always profitable.
The Winner 2.45S features Masterwood’s new tubeless bed system with easy-to-use vacuum clamping devices, allowing for the accurate machining of small and narrow solid wood components, with no need to make up holders or jigs.
It has an X axis of 2450mm, Y axis of 1300mm and Z axis of 110mm, plus a fourth C axis specified by Mr Hutchfield for taking index heads, which allows the head to be rotated through 360 degrees.
CAD drawings produced by Mr Hutchfield are imported into the Winner for it to create the necessary machining drawings. The machine can then perform all drilling, shaping and routing work for the maple panel components needed for the desk.
He said: “The Masterwood certainly gives us ‘more bang for our bucks’ as it’s very versatile and ideal for both batch and bespoke work.”
