"Behind The Scenes In A Modern Cabinet Manufacturing Plant" Ep 1: Design & Milling

Hey, Dirt Farmer Jay here from DirtFarmerJay.com. Today's modern cabinet shop is an incredible fusion of traditional craftsmanship, the digital revolution and modern materials. We're going to take you step by step what it takes to do millwork and cabinetry for settings such as industrial or commercial or residential. Stay tuned and we'll get you the downloads. Hey, Dirt Farmer Jay here from DirtFarmerJay.com. Recently, Dirt Farmer Maggie and I contracted our friends at Lone Pine Cabinet in West Jordan, Utah, to build us some cabinets for our garage. If you're like anybody else, storage space is at a premium and they did a really great job. And the process to do it is really cool. And we're going to share it with you in this multi-part series. Everything from measuring the actual space that the cabinetry is going to go in, design, concept, fabricating the parts, putting in the hardware, and finally, the installation, which includes fit and finish. So let's go ahead and get started. The process begins by determining what is in the space that will be occupied right now and what changes need to be made. Now, these cabinets encroach way too much in the garage and they made parking too tight. They also set on the floor, inviting moisture damage when we brought in snow in our vehicles and it melted and so forth, while providing a hideout for insects and rodents alike. Yuck! Enough of that. It's time to make a change. The finished product is beautiful and it's practical. While being off the floor, storing a whole heck of a lot and providing a nice work service for laying out tools and supplies when we're working on our vehicles or tractors. To get to this point, we first removed the cabinets and we measured the space very carefully, noting not only where the window positions and sizes were, but the width from side to side, the height from top to bottom, as well as obstacles like the garage door track that would affect how deep the cabinets were. My friend Steve sent me a dimension drawing along with a concept of the cabinet layout. Measure twice and cut once, right? And to make doubly sure that I didn't simply rubber stamp what Steve had provided, I also drew a quick diagram. And without referring to Steve's diagram, I measured all the distances and then compared notes. You know what? We both had the exact same dimensions. All right. It's safe to move forward. After we made our final decision on the layout of the cabinets, it was time to meet with another friend at Lone Pine, Dave. Time to get to work. All right. So I'm here with my friend Dave, who is the production manager in the production department here in this manufacturing facility. Once we have the dimensions that we took from our garage, I brought it to Dave here and Dave did his magic using a program called Cabinet Vision. Dave, we're looking at my actual job on the screen here. I mean, I can see the windows in our garage. When I brought this job to you, what was your thinking process? What did you do to get this layout the way it is? Well, I mean, for me in the production department, the cool thing about this is our designers a lot of times have a lot of the design already done. So I know when you and Steven met, did the measurement and stuff like that. I get a sheet of paper from Steve with a measurement on it of your wall. Right. And from there, he has a a sketched outline of kind of what you were looking for based on this conversation with you. And then from there, I I bring it in. I drop the wall in like you'll see from the plan view right here. You'll see the wall dropped in right there. So when you say plan view, that means looking from the like from the sky down or looking from the sky down. Yeah, if you're standing above it, you're looking down on top of it. So I dropped the wall in. And then from there, I just start bringing cabinets that we have saved in. And I can manipulate those cabinets into different shapes and sizes that we want to fit into your area. And it's pretty simple, actually. So so I'm looking at this and it looks like all these cabinets right here are the same size. Yeah. So the cool thing that kind of vision does are a lot of really cool stuff to make this job very, very easy. So, you know, rather than having to calculate in my head or use a calculator to try to figure out how wide each of these cabinets to be so they can be equal all the way across, you know, I can just click on each cabinet and then I can highlight each one. And this is just one of the many features kind of vision has. It just makes my job easy. And I can you can see how they're all highlighted. I can right click on it and just equalize those widths. And it makes them all the same for me. So in the production environment, in this modern cabinet shop, which is way cool. I'm a table saw guy with a chop saw. This program is actually doing several things for you at one time. What are some of those things it does? Well, from the very beginning, our designers use this to design it and and basically sell to the customers. They they put everything in there. They they bring up a nice 3D drawings and they give it to the customer for the customer to sign off on. Can you show us the 3D? Yeah, absolutely. So if I were to do this 3D, I just click on the 3D button here and it brings it up. And the 3D is nice for the customer because it gives them an idea of what it's going to look like in the end. Yeah, a lot of us have trouble visualizing. So this helps you to see what are we. OK, yeah. Most of our customers, they don't know how to read plans and elevations and stuff like that. So the 3D picture is what is really important to them. So that's one function. It's a great sales and vision or envisioning tool. That's one function from there for the production part. It's great because, again, you know, we granted the guys in the shop. They're absolutely some of the best carpenters that I know. But at the same time, when it comes to this kind of stuff right here, they're more assemblers. You know, a lot of the carpentry is happening right here on the screen. So everything that you see, we go into a cabinet. So let's just go to this little one right here. And I've got to use it to make sure that the doors are the right sizes. I've got to make sure that you see all these dowel holes right here and all these shelf pin holes. I got to make sure that all those in the correct place. And that way, when the guys go to assemble it, everything lines up the way it's supposed to. I got to make sure the material over here is all set correctly. We're using the right hinges, right door material, all that stuff. It all kind of it all comes into play right here on the screen. So that that way, when it gets out there for the CNC to cut and the guys to build it, it's all correct. They just literally have to build it. So what I see here is a great picture of it from the side showing all here. But over on this list, it's actually telling you also the dimensions of each individual component that builds this box in this cabinet. Exactly. So I can from the same screen, I can manipulate the box. And as I'm manipulating it, it'll change the material and the sizes over here. So I get a good idea of what's going on in the cabinet and make sure that it's going to go together correctly. So not only does it reflect the overall size of cabinets, but it's actually creating a cut list. Is that correct? This is correct. So what it does from the production point from there as well is is I mean, obviously, this stuff's got to get cut out and so that the guys can build it. So another main feature I use all the time is it's called S2M Center. I go into this and it creates the sort for every cabinet in your job, everything that's in your job right here. It's going to create the entire part list. It takes a bit to create it on the size of the job. But this is your part list. This is everything that will cut for your jobs that the guys have to use to assemble your job. And from there, I send it out to the machine and the guy has a different cut sheets and he starts cutting it out. So when what machine are we using to cut these parts out? What is it? It's a it's a BSE CNC machine. It stands for Computer Numerical Control. It's a lot of fancy terms just to mean that it's it's basically what it is. It's a computer and that computer runs a big router head. OK, and that big router head, it'll it'll choose different bits that it needs to do to make the different cuts on the material for stuff for like dados that so you can put in different parts to just cutting the actual part out itself, the whole outline, drilling the different holes for shelf pins and dowel holes, all that stuff. The machine chooses all that and it does it all. Excellent. Later on, Dave actually comes out and helps install. This is not one of the normal things he does, but he's my buddy, along with several other team members here at this Lone Pine cabinet in West Jordan. And so we're going to see him back in the field. Hey, thanks for explaining. This is really cool stuff. My pleasure. It's a lot of fun. Beats my old tape measure. Thanks a lot. OK, there you have it on this first portion of the process. If you stay tuned for just a few more moments, you'll see an end panel and take you to the next step. Or you can just visit the link in the description below. If you found this to be helpful, why don't you like it? And better yet, subscribe to our channel until the next segment. This is Dirk Farmer Jay from DirkFarmerJay.com.