Biesse Skil CNC router requires Microvellum software

 Friday, July 14, 2017

Morrow Furniture in Auckland, New Zealand, recently purchased a new Biesse Skill CNC router and manufactures a varied range of one-off product from kitchens, curved seating booths and complex designs. The company’s on board CNC software sufficed for much of their work, but before long the more complex nature of some contracts required more specialized software.

“Our work is varied and one-off” says second generation family member Matt Morrow, “and we needed software to prepare work for the router that facilitated this.” Matt added further.

“We researched online and talked to colleagues before inviting Tim Veale from Microvellum to give us a demonstration of their software. We immediately liked what we saw, but as AWISA was coming up decided to attend the show in Melbourne and have a good look at alternatives before finalizing our decision. After AWISA we chose Microvellum, confident that it was user friendly, comprehensive in its scope and did curve work very well, which was important.”

The company has three software operators, including Matt, who all has picked it up pretty easily despite having a limited background in using software for design and production.

“Initial demonstrations and personal tuition from Tim was very good and we needed very little after that. Any queries or problems and we simply call Tim and he goes online and fixes or explains it. The library setup that comes with Microvellum provided us with 300 cabinets that we can chop and change to suit the current job. We did need this library adapted to our methods because we use stop rebates to construct our cabinets. Tim did this at the start so all the cabinets in our library reflect that method.”

“I can’t believe how fast it is, it has sped up the whole process. Previously using the on board software we may have processed around 30 boards a day, on a recent job we processed 70. It does everything, all the hinge work, drilling, rebates, and any changes automatically flow right through the entire job which is very time-saving.”

“It is simple to use, draw a square on a panel and tell it you want to cut that out and it will do it, you can literally draw anything you want to be cut out – you simply need to learn to push the right buttons. It has opened up new work for us, we recently did a Maori carving, something we would previously have sent straight out to a sign writer. It is an awesome system, from the first demonstration we thought it would suit us well and so it has proved.”