Charles Sandford

Introducing our five-axis CNC machine – it's massive, programmable and carves large three-dimensional shapes out of solid wood.

Yes, on first glance, a blog post about our new CNC machine might seem like the ultimate woodworking nerd indulgence, but it's the things it can create rather than just the technology that has us so excited. Working with CAD drawings, our new five-axis CNC machine can precisely craft solid, complex three-dimensional objects.

Of course, that's something that we can do using other machinery and tools, but doing it with CNC technology means we can do it all in one process rather than moving from machine to hand-tooling to additional machine etc. And of course, CNC does it quickly and with absolute consistency between pieces, which means we can produce wood components at high volumes.

The five-axis CNC machine enjoying a rare moment of downtime in the workshop!

We selected this particular CNC machine, from SCM Woodworking Technology, for many technical reasons, not the least of which was it's large capacity. It can work with pieces of timber up to 500mm high x 1600mm wide x 6.5m long (even longer if we cantilever it – useful for objects such as flagpoles). In fact, this is the largest capactiy five-axis CNC machine SCM has brought into the country, giving us a unique ability to produce three-dimensional wood components at both volume and scale.

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