Guide to choose a woodworking machines.

This is a question that almost all woodworking industry in Indonesia always ask us, there is a lot of type of customer that is price oriented, technology oriented and the best one is purpose oriented.

Like I tell you before that every machines has a purpose and you cannot have a multi purpose that will suit's all you need! It just like you can buy a SUV (that is what they tell us) like Honda CRV and you planned to use this car as an off roader too! and the result is you can take your car to the service department maybe 1 time each week and pay about million's of rupiah's each time, some broken bones cause of accident, head ache to modify your car to made it became an off roader, or maybe divorced with your wife cause you never at home cause of you never can get back to your home from off road adventure cause your car cannot move even a Km, and you must have a towing car start to take your car from mountain or off road area. So if you want to use car's for ussual road, you can use it, but if you planned to use a car for an off road you better think of a Land Rover or something that are made for it!

NB : For CRV lover and user, I don't mean to break your heart Ok.., hahaha...

Example : sanding are different from one to another, you cannot use one kind of wide belt sander to have a 240 grade, from saw mill or even double planner product! It even depend on also kind of your woods (you cannot use teak woods wide belt sanders to use it also for rubber woods!), the size of your woods, the material condition (veneer or laminated veneer or solid wood or jointed solid woods), the quality you need's (depend on which country you planned to sell your product). There are a major different for each machine for that kind of process! So don't start to think your machine can do it all, if you say you have the machine that can do it all, I will gladly come to your place and proove what I am saying about.

To choose the right machine for you, you must start to think about some question like as :

1.   Product.

2.   Size of your product.

3.   Material of your product.

4.   The market of your product.

5.   The capacity you need's.

6.   Quality that required by your buyer.

7.   Moisture content from the woods.

8.   Budget.

9.   Factory size.

10. Machines before process.

11. Machines after process.

12. Finished or not finished product.

13. Improvement you expected from buying this machines.

14.  Long term planning for your production.

15. Side product.

16. How long do you planned to use this machine.

17. Worker quality.

18. Maintenance cost.

19. Tooling cost.

20. Time estimation.

21. Electricity cost and availibility.

22. Number of worker.

23. Dust collector required.

24. Training.

25. Break even point.

26. After sales service.

Those think above are a basic question that we ussual ask to our customer and maybe now we don't need to ask them cause they would tell us before (I hope so..!).

There are a lot of thing's that you need to consider before buying a right machines, even some times we must have discussion for some customer and provide solution for them maybe years! and then they just start to think about investing something, but that is not something that should be a problem, because a good supplier is the one that provide something that are really needed! not something cheap but the customer don't needed it and use less! So it's better for us not to sell machine rather than we sell machines and make a lot of money from it, but then our customer will never buy machines from us again!

Please if you are planning to invest some machines, start to think what I mentioned above, believe me it will help you choose the right machine for you! At least it will help you choose the right supplier also!

Don't think about cheap or expensive machines, but start to think something that suits you. And also don't think about machine modification, it will spend your time (time is money!), your mind, and sometimes your wives (hahaha..., just kidding Ok..), and the result are something that is use less because that is something you are not specialized! It like as you ask a carpenter to make a good painting!

Second hand machine's are something that maybe cross at your mind, if they do, you can think about buying a second hand notebook's and you can have it as an experience how it will do! Believe me, they do cost more than the new one in a some periods!