Clyde Valley Stairs Ltd is a good example of a small, family-run joinery business that is reaping considerable benefits by investing in a sophisticated CNC machining centre, often regarded as the preserve of major manufacturers.
This enterprising Coatbridge, Scotland staircase manufacturer has turned away from traditional methods of working in favour of a Masterwood Atlas, purpose-designed for the processing of staircase and other solid wood components.
Clyde Valley was set up in 1998 by Peter and Chris Stockwell and the company now employs 12 people, including three wood machinist apprentices, with a customer base in the highly populated central belt of Scotland. Bespoke timber staircases comprise the majority of its production and these are supplied to some of the country’s leading builders for use in both new-build and refurbishment projects. Stairs for private self-build housing projects represent the remaining 20% of its output.
With a turnover of £350,000, the com-pany’s quality staircases can be found in several prestigious locations, including the Carlton Hotel in Edinburgh and an exclusive private housing development in what was once the Scottish capital’s City Hospital.
Clyde Valley decided to do away with its old-fashioned hand routers and Pickles trencher for several reasons, said Chris Stockwell, who was the driving force behind the modernisation scheme. ‘We had heard about the time-saving and the constant precision that could be achieved with a machining centre and, as this business is becoming more price-driven and competitive by the month, it seemed the natural way for us to go. Also, as it’s difficult to recruit experienced joiners these days and takes us four years to train someone to a satisfactory level, an important attraction was that the CNC can be run by a single semi-skilled operator,’ he said.
Clyde Valley’s decision to purchase the Atlas was backed up by plenty of first-hand evidence as to the scope of its capabilities. Chris Stockwell first went out to the Masterwood factory in Rimini, Italy and followed this with a visit to a leading staircase manufacturer in the Midlands to see an Atlas in action.
Staircase software
‘What attracted us to the Atlas was that Masterwood has a strong pedigree in producing dedicated machining centres for joinery manufacturers and also offers specialist staircase software, unlike many of the other manufacturers we looked at,’ he said. He also cited the machine’s ‘high specification, its extremely competitive price and the high level of after-sales service’ provided by Masterwood (UK) Ltd, which sells the Italian-made machines in the UK.
The Atlas comes with an X axis of 3500mm, Y axis of 1200mm and Z axis of 500mm. Featuring a wide range of head compositions, the main router, either 9 or 11hp, can tilt from vertical to horizontal from -7O to 90O, by pneumatic movement or DC motor. NC-controlled, it is possible to have up to 25 tool posts, with a maximum tool diameter of 160mm.
Clyde Valley Stairs chose the larger XL version with its 6m-long bed as it can easily accommodate a 4.2m minimum size stringer length with no need to move the bulky piece once it has been placed in position on the bed ready for machining.
Almost all of the numerous processing operations required for a staircase’s components are now carried out on the Atlas, which was installed in April. These include routing and shaping the stringers, shaping winder and bullnose treads, nosing and grooving treads and morticing and routing the newel housings.
Time savings
The considerable time savings that are being achieved are impressing everyone. For example, while it used to take a bench hand joiner an entire day to produce a winder set for a typical staircase, the Atlas is now turning out up to 15 a day, each one consistently produced to an accuracy of 0.1mm.
As an optional extra the Atlas has been fitted with a conveyor belt to handle waste removal. It also has vacuum connections, allowing the company to produce jigs for use with specialist work, such as rounding and boring out newel posts, with the machined versions far more accurate than when they were produced by hand.
‘The beauty of the machine is that there’s virtually no chance of anything going wrong as compared with hand work, as the possibility of human error has been removed,’ said Chris Stockwell.
He carries out all the design work and programming on a laptop using the Atlas’s MasterStair Windows-compatible software, before giving the disk to the machine’s operator. Masterwood has also supplied an optional network card, allowing Mr Stockwell to connect his laptop into the machine so he can send programs direct to the operator rather put it on disk.
‘The Atlas represents the biggest investment in machinery we have made and we consider it was totally justified even though we are a relatively small operation,’ said Peter Stockwell. ‘Moving up to CNC has to be the way forward for smaller businesses like ourselves as it allows us to compete with the big players on a level playing field. We have already been able to pull in delivery times and will now be able to take on a lot more extra work.’
