November/December 2003
Pages 22 & 23

Linkwood’s Bespoke Production Software for Bespoke Kitchen Manufacturer

Drive up to Benton Kitchens’ gleaming, modern premises in Somerset and you could be forgiven for thinking you were approaching the smart showroom of a Porche, Ferrari or BMW dealer.

While Benton’s products match these high end, high price brands in terms of customer profile and even order value, their appearance is markedly traditional.

Inside the modern Benton building sits a showroom filled with a wide range of bespoke traditional furniture for kitchens bedrooms and bathrooms, seemingly a world away from the hi-tech, precision engineered world of the modern motorcar.

But explore further into the company’s premises and you will uncover an object lesson in small-scale manufacturing using the latest CNC machinery linked to sophisticated production planning software.

Dominating the factory space is an enormous CMS Triax 5 machining centre. Its bed is 5.5m x 1.8m. Some clue to how pivotal this machine is to the company’s operations comes when you carry out a headcount of production staff – one knocking up, one spraying, one carrying out final assembly and, er, that’s it. Just three production staff.

All right, joint owner Steven Benton spends his time on the factory floor, tending to his Triax, but it’s still hugely impressive because this is no small-scale operation.

This seeming ideal world of manufacturing has been achieved through the considerable efforts of Steve and his brother Richard, and a huge input from Linkwood who have supplied and developed a whole range of linked software from Pattern Systems for whom they are the exclusive UK Dealer.

Product Planner generates the cutting lists. In turn that is linked to Cut Planner, which optimises jobs; Quick-Track Parts, which generates labels; and Drill Mate, which acts as the basis for all the CMS machine’s work.

Richard Benton explains that the company’s philosophy was to expand using sophisticated machinery and software. They chose Linkwood and Pattern Systems after a six-month search.  Richard explains, “We chose Linkwood because it could do everything we wanted and more. Although the appearance of our furniture is very traditional it’s bespoke, custom sized and we wanted the very best manufacturing processes.

Richard’s role is design, and he had built up a vast catalogue of parametric unit configurations in the sort of bewildering range of frame sections, profiles and beads that would suit a single cabinetmaker, but a highly sophisticated computerised manufacturer, phew.

Linkwood’s Technical Specialist Adam Bumpsteed worked with Richard on establishing the computerised parametric product catalogue, ensuring that all the options entered into Product Planner would then cascade through the whole software package – especially CNC.

The initial process of first using the new culture of CNC is traumatic for all manufacturers such as Benton. Steve honestly admits, “It was a complete nightmare at first, a huge learning curve. It took me six months to learn how to use the machine properly. Even turning it on and off was a problem, but we wanted to do so much with the machine we really stretched ourselves.”

Richard was a dab hand with AutoCAD, but like many of his counterparts from a skilled joinery background, Steve had no prior computer experience. Expertise aplenty came from Linkwood and their Technician Adam Bumpsteed, a man steeped in the strange ways and acronyms of the computer, with a woodworking back ground who relishes the challenges of getting the most out of those frustrating but potentially awesomely powerful business tools.

So the fact that the CMS Triax 5 was unique at the time in the UK was no problem.

Bumpsteed worked with CMS in both Italy and the USA to adapt the machine’s Wintools Post Processing Software to work with Drill Mate.

Bumpsteed says, “There are always different quirks with different machines. With the CMS for example, the machine offsets are XY negative, Drill Mate is XY positive. The machine is also not common over here. But Drill Mate is very user friendly, and in the States CMS machines are much more common, even if they’re not used in the same way as here.”

So Bumpsteed’s initial task, and one typical of the initial vagaries of CNC, was to stop the drilling head flying off in the wrong direction with potentially horrific consequences for the machine’s bed and tooling.

Once up and running the Benton Brothers’ determination to explore the limits of the machine came to the fore.

Setting up the product catalogue in Product Planner thoroughly meant the software easily dealt with changes in panel size. Drillings are parametric, and Drill Mate has the additional advantage that complex collections of drilling and routing processes can be amalgamated together in Feature Groups which can be easily assigned to a whole range of components.

The machine is networked into the company’s computer system and animations of drillings are pre-run on the machine’s computer to check such things as handings.

All panels are milled – so carcases initially cut on a potentially inaccurate sliding table saw end up absolutely square. But that’s every day stuff for CNC. Benton joint their frames on CNC, they even shoot their doors in.

Milling the carcase panels means the front frame fits square onto a precisely made cabinet, so the company confidently mill all their doors as well.

Not satisfied with that they have also developed a facility to joint face frame stiles and rails on CNC.

All this has come about through the company’s hard work with Linkwood, and the skill is in creating a finished product to a very precise standard which looks to the customer like it’s been lovingly crafted by an old boy with a set of traditional woodworking tools and Woodbine on the go.

Such is the Benton brothers’ drive to expand the horizons and capabilities of their machine that one wouldn't be surprised to visit them a year from now and find them undertaking all their panel processing on the CMS Triax.

They use 8x4ft veneered block board for all carcases. This fits on the vast bed of their machine, immediately overcoming the problem of nesting for those manufacturers using 2.7 x 2.07 metre sheets of MFC, who have to carry out a rip cut first.

Bumpsteed says, with some relish, “With a matrix bed on the machine we could easily use Cut Planner / Drill Mate with DXF Merge for nesting.”

For a company who have largely been able to dispense with those typical woodworking resources of hand tools and men, side lining their old Altendorf should be a piece of cake.