How Has Technology Impacted the Effectiveness of the Woodworking Industry?

One of the major impacts on the furniture and joinery industry over the last 50 years is the advancements in technology. This has given joiners the ability to mass produce bespoke  furniture while reducing the risk of mistakes being made that could compromise the quality of the work. In this article I will explore the some of the latest woodworking tools available and explain how they can increase the efficiency of joiners.

A woodworking tool that has increased the efficiency of producing furniture is combination machines. These essentially bring all of the tools that a joiner would need to construct a piece of furniture together into one machine. Some of the most popular combination machines would normally include:

• Spindle Moulder Functions
• Circular & Band Saws
• Electric Motors
• Planers & Thicknessing Blocks

The benefits of a woodworking business purchasing combination machines is that is make it easier for the joiner to build a piece of furniture as all of the equipment that is required is all in one place. This will increase the speed that furniture can be produced as there will not be a delay caused when moving the furniture to different machines to complete the next stage of the process.

When joiners have to create niche pieces of furniture there are many cases where the design on the material is very complex. In the past woodworkers would have to sculpture and shape the design by hand which could result in mistakes being made however CNC routers have solved that problem as they are a remote controlled by a computer. The way CNC routers work is they use CAD and CAM programming which allows the operator to enter the specific coordinates that the computer needs to build the furniture and then CNC router will carve, saw and mould the wood to these specific coordinates.

This has a positive impact on the efficiency of the building process for as the construction is controlled by a computer it reduces waste and frequency of errors that would be caused by a manual construction of a piece of furniture. This can also be highly effective for niche furniture companies as they can enter separate coordinates if they need to build a bespoke piece of furniture.

One of the latest advancements in technology is digital printing. The advantage that this gives joiners and designers is they can create a plate with their chosen design on it which can be transferred to the surface of the furniture. This effect this has on the lead time to complete a product is substantially quicker as digital printing removes many of the traditional mechanical steps used in printing. In addition as the design is stored on a computer is means every print will be the same which makes businesses more cost effective as there is less waste being outputted. A further benefit of having the design on a computer system is that it also gives business flexibility with their designs as if one design is not working that can easily modify the plates so that a different design is printed.

To conclude as technology is evolving the woodworking industry is can utilise technology in order to create better quality products as the design and construction process is faster yet more reliable and outputs less waste. As technology continues to improve it gives the woodworking industry the capability to create bespoke furniture products at a quicker speed which will ultimately give the consumer more choice when making a purchase.