开云体育

I work in a co-op shop that includes 4 professional furniture makers, and a couple hobbyists as well. We have 4000 square feet of space, and redundancy in many machine areas-saws in particular. Thank goodness.

We have only one Felder in house, an early 2000's KF700 saw/shaper combo. This was a three phase vfd converted to single phase arrangement. The vfd failed on it a few years ago, and Felder was very helpful in helping me diagnose the problem and implement a solution (which was not replacing the $1900 vfd, but changing out the electrics to run 3 phase as we have it available). That said, this machine was down for nearly 3 months if I recall correctly. We had to wait for parts to come from Austria more than once. If that was our only saw, we'd have been sunk. Most of our machines are pretty old school, but commercial grade for the most part. Probably like what you may have been used to before. Yes, some of them have an aftermarket digital readout on them but that's the extent of higher technology with the exception of spiral cutterheads.?

The reason for this is two fold. A. we are custom furniture makers who don't make a ton of money, and didn't make it previously doing something else. It's a tough business. B. There is just not much to go wrong on machines that don't have all the bells and whistles of motorized fences, CNC controls, vfd converters, etc. Would it be nice? Sure it would. Can you do without it and still make beautiful things? Absolutely. Would those options make me that much more efficient to be able to afford those machines? I seriously doubt it. I bet they are a joy to use, but so is my all manual Panhans slider, or my old Oliver 299 planer, and my Eckstrom Carlson edge sander. I'd love to work in an all Martin shop, but that's not really an option for me, or most people that need to make a living with their tools.

So my message is pragmatic. Buy what you want, but don't feel like you need to blow your whole wad on machinery. You can make what you want with whatever you happen to buy. Some of the most talented woodworkers I know make due with less than a quarter of the equipment budget you're pondering. You could save a lot of money and spend it taking classes from the best people in the business. They would likely be in shops that were not as well appointed as what you are talking about setting up.

I do like our Felder. Its a fine machine. It has its quirks, and some of them have been addressed on the newer machines. I didn't buy this one, so I can't say that I'd buy another but I think my partner would indeed.

Jason