What's your maximum box per day volume?

[Dave Rosenbleeth]

At the last camp there was a good deal of discussion about how many boxes you can cut in a day using different methods. In my case I have what is essentially a PRS Standard with a Spindle only and do all my cutting with a single 5mm bit. We only cut the sides and cut the tops, bottoms, and stretcher/nailers on the saw while the sides are cutting on the bot. We're using butt construction and 3/4" material. The same man runs the bot and the saw. By the end of a normal 8 hour day we will typically have 12-16 sheets on the CNC cut and all the rest of the sheets to go with that quantity including shelves and backs cut. If you say that 1/2 the sheets are uppers (9 per sheet) and half are bases (6 per sheet), then that means one man cuts 45 cabs on the low end (12 sheets on the cnc) and around 60 average.
So I would like to hear some honest comparisons from you other guys out there who do production cutting. This isn't a request for bragging about the most you have ever cut when doing one of those "oh sh..." days! But real averages in normal circumstances.
Please include your tool description and how you cut your parts (All parts, just sides, butt, dadoed, etc. Obviously there would need to be a huge number of responders to actually develop some averages based on similar systems but we just might learn some good info here anyway.

[Ryan Patterson]

I was cutting an average of 50 sheets a day the cutting time averaged 7 minutes including unload reload. The time it took to cut a sheet not including part removing and loading, cutting time only, averaged 4 minutes per sheets. Sheets that had a lot of drilling operations the time was up to 15 min. and sheets that did not have drilling 1.5 min. I used a PRT Alpha with a 3HP spindle and an air drill. Cutting speeds ranged from 10” to 12” per sec. With three guys in the shop this also aloud time to assemble 20 to 25 boxes a day.

[Kevin Dunphy]

Dave I.am on th same speed as Ryan a little less 35 sheets a day.Also Ryan has very easy soft ware/I think my guys are a little faster at asslemble


Ryan while I have you here I want to up grade could you post your updates on your web site it would help me decided

[David Buchsbaum]

Good post.

Hmm, hard to make a comparison since we cut almost all closet parts now, very few cabinet parts. When we do cut cabinet parts we average about 4 sheets per hour, that is all the parts and all joinery: system holes, dadoes for shelves, drawer slide and hinge holes, etc. I only use the table saw for solid wood, bevel cuts, and the occasional odd-ball piece that has to be trimmed or re-ripped.

Closet parts are a good bit slower, since there tend to be lots of shelf holes, plus all the Rafix holes (20mm and 5mm), four little notches for each adjustable shelf, plus we machine both sides of most sheets; the first side machines all the holes etc on the backside of any two-sided parts, then we flip the whole sheet for the face machining and cutting parts to size. We average closer to 2 or 3 sheets per hour, including drawer parts (with all holes pre-drilled, including holes for the slides on the outside of the drawer sides, and holes in the sub-fronts for attaching drawer faces and pulls).

We don't do any assembly of closet parts in the shop except for the drawers. We typically process all the parts (edgeband, trim, clean, insert cams, wrap and stack) for one job while the next job is being cut. We can cut about 15 - 20 sheets in a day, while processing the same amount of material from the previous day's cutting. That equates to one to one and a half average closet jobs, which we can also install in one day. That's with one or two people working in the shop. The ShopBot rarely runs all day or even every day in a typical week.