December 2007 Edition

CNC

A Sign of the Times

Purchasing a CNC router allowed a sign maker to step into the 21st Century

After countless nights cutting out letters by hand to create signs that kept him from designing others, Joseph Putjenter, owner of Artistic Sign and Design, Omaha, NE, added a CNC router to alleviate some of his workload. For him, the payoff was immediate.

Putjenter became a leader in his industry by developing a skill that let him cut out letters by hand using a router or jig saw. A typical project might involve cutting out 150 letters.

"I became so good at it that I could cut out letters in my sleep," Putjenter said. "But the work was so repetitive that it got old fast. The first job or two in a week was okay but after that it became drudgery."

Sign-making starts with a design in the Freehand Graphics drawing program. Next comes plotting the full-size letters on paper, spray-mounting the letters to the final material, and then cutting the letters using a saw.

Even though Putjenter was good at what he did, the process was still lengthy; he spent more than half his time on production, neglecting sales and design.

"Cutting letters by hand is a time-consuming process," he said. "When I am doing production I'm not designing or talking to customers. There is nothing going on in the front office."

The new CNC router increased revenue $100,000 per year and reduced material costs by 50 percent

Putjenter hired several employees, but realized teaching them the necessary skills to produce the quality his customers expected would be difficult.

Instead, he turned to CNC as a way to keep his quality high while giving himself time to focus on more creative work – why he got into the business of sign design in the first place. The advantage of CNC for Putjenter is that he can set up the machine by loading the material and the program, and then walk away and do other tasks while the part is produced.

The New Employee

Putjenter chose the LC router from Techno-Isel, New Hyde Park, NY, to join his team. The 48"×96" table is large enough to handle his largest sheets of material and vacuum holding makes it possible to load and secure a new sheet in seconds. Plus, the machine works with most CAD software, so he still does most of his design work in the familiar Freehand Graphics program.

Other features that attracted him to this model include ball screws on all three axes, offering smooth motion, accuracy, and repeatability, as well as a closed-loop servo control system which provides constant position feedback, more power, and smooth, continuous motion.

All these features translate into a productive machine.

"The router follows a path more accurately than any human woodworker so I can pack the letters much closer together," he said.

"I can produce letters and other designs with less waste, which has reduced my material costs by 50 percent."

"As a result, I can produce letters and other designs with less waste, which has reduced my material costs by 50 percent."

The key advantage of the new machine is that Putjenter, or any one of his employees, can load the machine and it will then produce letters or other complicated designs on its own without requiring additional attention. The machine produces letters and other specialized shapes that are more accurate than can be produced by hand, even by Putjenter himself.

"The Techno machine also eliminated much of the time that I used to spend checking my employees' work because I know it will produce a perfect job every time."

The result is that Putjenter is able to devote much more of his time to the design and sales activities that contribute to growing his business.

Entering New Markets

The new machine has also opened up the potential for Artistic Sign and Design to enter new markets by producing more complicated three-dimensional designs that were either impossible to produce by hand or not practical because they would have taken so long that the cost would not have been competitive.

For example, the company can produce logos and designs of products with contoured shapes that command a premium price because only sign makers with CNC machinery can make them. The ability of the machine to produce letters without operator attention also makes it practical to produce multi-dimensional signs that have depth and texture by incorporating raised elements cut out of a substrate, usually PVC or high-density urethane.

Aside from cutting waste and producing more accurate designs, the best thing the machine has done for Putjenter is increase revenue.

"Purchasing a router has been like adding an extra employee that works faster and produces more accurate work than a human employee," Putjenter said. "The payments on the machine are also considerably less than a human employee.

"I estimate that the machine is producing about $100,000 per year worth of work, most of which we would not even have gotten if we did not have it. This is about five times what it costs to own the machine," Putjenter said.

"Right now we are only keeping the machine busy about half the time. So as our volume increases we have the potential to improve the machine's rate of return. It's a clear sign that CNC machining is the wave of the future for the industry." Techno-Isel

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