Automatic Production of Small Wood Parts

Abstract

The authors point out that more attention has been given to the design of hand-fed and manually controlled general-purpose machinery for woodworking than to the building of automatic machines. Among other reasons it is shown that the set-up time is generally long as compared with the working time because of the rapidity with which wood can be worked.

As examples of automatic woodworking machines the authors describe three: (1) A knob-tapping machine, chosen to show how production may be increased by performing a single operation more rapidly than the best operator could do it by hand; (2) a square-knob blanking machine to illustrate the combination of several distinct operations in one mechanism; (3) a rosette machine as an example of one the primary purpose of which is to achieve quality without sacrificing speed.

The economic principles involved in the use of automatic woodworking machinery are discussed in the remainder of the paper.