For those sitting on the fence over getting going with electronic templating, don't sit any longer!

We have been using an LT-55 for over a year now and wouldn't consider doing it any other way. It's more cost effective and accurate than doing it by hand and we just found another means of justifying it's existance.

We have been doing a few jobs for the largest kitchen and bath store in our area. (About 12 to 15 hundred kitchens a year). We have done SS, quartz and granite for them. Naturally we want more from them than we have been getting. We got a call today with some very good news. They are going to switch all of their high end tops to us.

Their main reason? We do electronic templates and we don't have any issues that cause them problems and delays. Our tops fit every time! Our SS, Quartz and Granite tops are scribed to fit the walls. They love it. No gobs of silicone and no cutting drywall to get the tops in.

These guys will give us 150 to 200 tops a year.

Using electronic templating isn't just about improving work flow. It can be about getting more work just because you have it and can be better than the competition.


Paul

Paul,
Congratulations on the good news. I take it you're hiring?

Thanks! great testimonial!
Thats great, I'm glad things are going so good.

Tom,

I've been trying to find an experienced SS person for a couple of months now. None to be had. Now that we are ramping up the stone end of things we will be needing someone capable of looking after installs as well.

70 hrs. a week is pretty much my limit on an ongoing basis and vacations are going to be very rare for the near future. I guess we will have to hire people without experience and train them.

All the really keen people either have a good job or have gone to Alberta to make 120K a year doing basic jobs in the oil industry. Alberta is sucking up trades people from all over Canada.

Paul

Which LT-55 do you have?  I am looking for someone that has the new PDA for the second half of a review for the FabNet.

Andy,

I have the PDA version. The PDA can be a pain in the A** sometimes, but in general it works great. The battery leaves a little to be desired, but with a little management it's not a problem.

One of these days I will upgrade to the new computer. I'm waiting till all the bugs are worked out.

Did a template for a 2 1/2 sheet job this morning. In and out in not much more than 10-12 minutes. 20 minutes on the computer and we were cutting sheets. That timeframe isn't possible with stick templates, not to mention handling the stick templates from the job to the shop.

Paul

Jon,

I would be extremely honored to have someone such as yourself come to work with me. But, it's only likely to happen in my wildest dreams.

Paul

Has anyone ever tried routing a per-fitted scribe onto a splash using a digital templater? I have been curios about this for over a year now.

Tom,

The majority of our jobs have a tile cove or a full cove backsplash. We cut a scribe strip on the CNC to match the wall and glue and sand it in the shop. These vary from as little as 1/8" to in some cases 1/2" or more over 8 to 10 feet. They fit perfectly to the walls when we install. The LT-55 is perfect for doing this. We take points every 3 or 4 inches. More if the wall is very wavy and we shoot right into the corners.

We just did a job that had vertical grooved pine walls. The house is probably 40 years old and the boards were all over the place.  We got points on each side of each board. When we installed the top the customer was amazed that the splash fit the wall perfectly. Cutting and fitting this top cost us no more time than any other job with straight walls.

We layout the job on full sheets with all the parts nested. There is usually enough left on one edge to cut the scribe strips. If not we find somewhere on the sheet to cut the parts in pieces and join them together as we do the splash glueup.

We also scribe the wall side of all our granite and quartz jobs to fit the walls.

We are the only guys in our area doing this. The kitchen and bath dealers love it and we spend very little extra time doing it. The fact that we do it and others don't has helped to generate new work for us.


Paul

Paul,
Thanks for the reply. How do you figure the inside line up, so you don't cut off at an angle? Or am I reading to much difficulty into this?

Tom,

Not quite sure what you mean. I will describe what we do and hopefully that will answer your questions. If not I could email one of our drawings to help.

The first thing we do is determine a line at the back of the top that is approx 1/4" average from the wall. It usually varies from an 1/8 to 3/8 or so. We make our tops 25 1/4 wide, so we usually just offset a line from the front at 25". Sometimes this leaves too much width (say 3/4") so we then angle the line a litttle to get back to something closer to 1/4" average. This method makes the deck a little wider at one end compared to the other end, but it's not noticeable. Better to have a more consistent looking splash than a perfect width top as far as looks go.

This line seperates what will be cut as deck from what will be the scribe strip. We repeat this for each deck area.

We then decide where shop and field joints will be and add them to the drawing. At this point we simply copy each deck area and place it on a 30x145 rectangle representing the sheet. We move the pieces around to get the best yield and then lay out pieces for backspash, strips for stacked edges and precut inside corners, etc. The scribe strips are then copied and cut into shorter pieces if necessary and placed where ever they fit, usually on the edge of the sheet.

We cut the scribe strips first and remove them from the machine as we cut so as not to create any problems with such narrow parts moving.

Most of the time the part location on assembly is not a problem because the finished side is always on top solving the left to right problem and the glue side is straight and the backside is wavy. The only time there is an issue is when we are real tight on the sheets and have had to cut the strips into 3 or 4 pieces. A quick look at the drawing and matching of widths at the ends solves the problem in a minute or two.

Once you have done it once or twic it is really very straigh forward. My explanation is probably much more cumbersome than the actual process.

We have done complex tops with 5 sides (odd angle corners)and full cove splash with three field joints and they fit perfectly without any trimming on site. The only tricky part is making certain that the field joints are prefitted on a perfectly flat table in the shop. Any fitting in the shop that isn't perfect results in extra work onsite making the splashes and scribes fit without showing a glue line.

Hope this helps

Paul

Paul

Paul,

Dont be afraid to upgrade your machine, as far as bugs, the XL has not run into any yet. We release a development version of the software to all the sales guys to play with before we release it to the public, that way if theres any bugs we can fix them before anyone has to deal with them in the field.

The new system runs on a 40gig computer running windows XP, the screen freeze-ups that you run into on your PDA are a thing of the past.

The new system allows you to add your own cad program right onto the machine so you can edit everything right there. Our new XL software is the easiest cad ever, now you can manually draw things on the screen, such as square vanities or islands without even turning the laser light on.

Thanks for all your kind advice about your experience with the LT-55.

Tom,

We don't use the digital templating yet but once it is digitized it is real simple to make the scribe strip for the top of the splash.

Offset you line at the backsplash in 1/4" at all the corners.  Then draw a straight line from corner to corner.  Now inspect the straight line to make sure the scribe is never thinner than 1/4" at any point along the splash.

Now you just need to cut that part off the counter drawing and nest the piece along with the others.  Just make sure you keep track of where it goes.

Hope that makes sense.

So the Reader's Digest version of what you're both saying is that you use the front edge and offset it to establish the front edge of the scribe? I definitely need to look into that.

No offense, Paul, but I don't see how you can get a perfect fit from straight line changes from teh LT. Do you either bezier or spline curve through it?

Tom,

I guess perfect fit is a relative term. Many of these tops are closed at both ends and require a little clearance anyway. The irregularity in the gyprock is gradual enough that straight line segments over 3 or 4 inches don't make any difference. If there is a more pronounced difference we take points at a closer spacing. Also the radius of the bit removes any definition of a sharp transition in line segments.

Basically it works quite well. Customers are amazed at how well the tops fit the walls. Before digital templating and CNC we did this by hand on site with a belt sander to make the final fit. It took considerably more time and labour to place, mark, sand and refit over and over to get results that weren't as good as we get now. Not to mention all the dust created in the home.

Paul

Paul

Thanks again for the reply.
That's the thing, though. Coming from a laminate and early SS background, we really do get a near perfect fit when we scribe. I'd say that 95% of the back can't have a piece of paper slipped behind it. We explain that with settling, resettling, climate changes, etc., the top will never be as good as it is when we leave, so we want to leave it near-perfect so any changes leave as little a difference as possible.. This, of course, excludes scribing to tile (when it is rarely necessary), or a wall rough with glue or somesuch.