Breton Vs Northwood

[Roldao]

Hello everyone,

As this is my very first post, let me introduce myself to be polite.

My Name is Diogo Roldão, From Brazil (so please excuse some english mistakes). We own a fabshop with about 40 years in the local market.
Our company process about 650-800 sqm of material /month, mostly Silestone®, Dekton® and italian marble.

We are a full manual comany, and we are doing good, but now we are experiencing some situations:

1 - Our production employees are getting old... some of them have more than 25 years, and we are having problems in finding new ones.
2 - We are focused on the final customer operation, but now we are being requested to do some multifamiliar jobs for some contractors.

So, we are intending to become digital.

we plan to buy 03 things, and i would appreciate any oppinion about them:

1: Manual WorkCenter
-Thibaut T108
-Ghines Systar
-Raveli Syrma

2: Cutting Solution
-Breton SmartCut 550 Optima
-Breton Combicut
-Northwood Sawjet
-Waterjet Only Machine

3. Software
-Breton Fabmaster Lite
-SlabSmith

That's a lot of questions...

thak you in advance for the attention

[flav]

650 to 800 sq m is gotta be about 1500 to 1900 sq ft. Thats quite an operation.
You must have about 7-10 full time polishers?

With that kind of production, you should seriously consider a CNC router (Park Titan, Breton NC300, Northwood EDS router, etc). We have a Park Titan router and have been able to replace 90% of the polishing that was done by hand.

For the Cutting, the ones you listed is good, except for water jet only machine. I don't have one myself, but from what I understand, it is not intended to replace a bridge saw, just compliment it.

For the software - I would add Moraware JobTracker to your list as a way to track your jobs / production if you don't already have a solution. The other software that runs the machines comes with the machines. Slab smith would be purchased with a Northwood Sawjet or Park Fusion. Breton Fabmaster would be purchased with a Breton CNC.

For a Brazilian company, I am very surprised you didn't mention Giallo Ornamental in your list of material that you process ?!

[Ken Lago]

Flav, 1 square meter is about 10 square foot.

[Dan R.]

closer to 11 sq ft per sq meter.

[Dan R.]

If you are doing flat edges, I would suggest a Sasso Flying flat machine. this can polish an edge at a rate over 20 meters per hour.

Many here like the Northwood and Slabsmith combination. A fellow Brazilian recently bought a Northwodd and is very happy with the machinery, etc.

[Ken Lago]

What type of work do you do?
A little more info is needed to give you our opinions on what machines will be best for your situation, all the machines you mentioned are good but designed for different tasks.

[flav]

Flav, 1 square meter is about 10 square foot.

Sorry, I meant to say 1500 to 1900 sq ft. per week

[Roldao]

First of all, Thank you all for the replies.

Flav, actually we have 14 full time polishers...

About the routing, I have researched about CNC Routers, and liked what I saw, but our company had a bad experience with an intermac CNC Router in the past: about 15 years ago, one of the directors traveled to Marmomacc Italy, and bought an Intermac Router. In That Time Brazil didn't have any technical assistance, the acquisition was made without any research, and the we have never been able to make it work... The company spent USD 200k in the router (It was a lot of money 15 year ago) and sold the machine for 20k 2 years later, after producing only 200 sq m. It was a disaster...
So considering de increase of complexity in a CNC Router versus a CNC Cutter (change of tools, vacuum cups positioning, etc), we decided to stay manual with the routing, but increasing production with work Centers (thibaut, Ghines and Raveli).

About the cutting, our first idea was cutting with saw jets (Northwood or Breton Combicut). But i would like to share with you an "idea" that passed through our minds:

What we cut with saws, its cheaper and faster, but there is a con: the change of the saw for each material to be cut (Marble, Granite, Siletone, Dekton, Porcelain tiles). So we thinked: Can a waterjet cut our production fast enough? Below are the Maths.

We cut at most 800 sq meters/month
In our kind of projects 1 sq m = Aprox 6 linear Meters
In My research, i found a speed of 1m/min with waterjet
Adding 20 minutes of setup/removing pieces for each 4 meters of material = 800/4= 200 * 0,333h = 66h
Now the time actually cutting:
800sq m = 4800 linear meters = 4800 minutes = 80 hours

Total time: 166 Hours = less than a month... something wrong whith the maths/idea? Appreciate comments.

about Moraware, i will research about it. Thank you

About giallo, we do process it, and some kind of granites, but not as much as the other materials.

Dan and Ken,

we produce mostly kitchen and vanity tops. we use 20mm slabs and the most of our jobs require us to do that 45º cut (I Think you call "miter joint").

About the software... any big difference between slab smith/fabcenter?

thank you all!

[flav]

I would highly recommend you revisit cnc routers. I am sorry to hear about your bad experience with Intermac. All I can say is that we are in Canada but the border has not stopped Park from providing us with excellent service. Typical time to return a call from tech support of 1-3 hours same day. Replacement parts that were covered under warranty arrived next-day. We are almost 2 years with it and I can say we produced much more than 200 sq m with it .
I would recommend you speak to a few of the cnc vendors and tell them you want to visit a shop that has a cnc router to see what it runs like in person. I think it will change your mind.

I think your water jet speed is a bit too optimistic. I don't have a water jet but I heard of speeds closer to 0.5 m/min for 3cm granite. Another thing to consider is that a water jet produces a very rough cut at higher feed speeds, so that means that it will take longer to polish an edge by hand that was cut by water jet compared to saw blade. It may also cause problems if you are trying to run the pieces through a flat edge polishing machine due to the rough edge. Do you plan to cut the 45 deg mitres by water jet as well ?

If you have to change bridge saw blades so often, maybe just group each type of material job together (cut all marble, then all Dekton, etc).

[Dan R.]

If you do not do a lot of radius cuts' then a cnc saw will be much cheaper to buy, cheaper to maintain and cheaper to operate than a machine with a jet. There are some very inexpensive 5 axis cnc saws, that work very well. You may want to look at your material handling processes, as they are a huge thief of productive time.

[Roldao]

Flav,

You are right, the jet maths were too optimistic

I will revisit the CNC routers.

Dan,

The versatility of the saw jet is what made us think about it... But tel me something:

Which would be the best option to finish sink holes, once the saw couldn't go all the way to cut them... Cutting tolls in the router?

Thank you both,

[Dan R.]

The Ravelli, or Thibualt will cut sinks. The saw can cut many sinks (with straight lines) and let the hand fabricators finish the cut and polish by hand.

IMO, trying to find a machine that will do everything is a mistake. No machine is ideal for every phase of stone fabrication.
Why have a jet occupied at a higher cost than another machine could do far cheaper? Do the math on ROI (return on investment) of several machine options.

I would think a 5 axis cnc saw would be far more efficient for cutting. Cheaper to buy, cheaper to maintain, cheaper to operate, cheaper to own overall.

Take the $100,000 you save by not buying the jet portion and apply it to a great sink cutting solution. There are many small cnc routers that will cut and polish sinks for that $100,000. Then you could be cutting and polishing a sink while still cutting slabs on the 5 axis cnc saw. This has to be far better for productivity.

Do some investigating. The time to learn is before you buy, not after.

[Matt Kraft]

No mention here of a digital templating solution.

I'd put Proliner, LT55, and Leica on the list to research.

Integral part to learn early on the quest to going digital.

[Roldao]

Dan,

You were right, after all the research and maths, the saw blade+router was the best option. Thank you all for the help

[fairfaxmarble]

We purchased Breton CNC and pro cutter. We do not have anybody experienced w this machinery. Is there anybody who uses Breton, is it difficult to operate?

Mehmet
http://www.granitecountertops.pro/

[Ger Vanderbas]

Dear Mehmet,

The Breton machines are not difficult to operate. There will be as with any new tool some hairpulling as you begin to understand the logic and sequence of operations and features of a CNC machine.

We will be at your facility for weeks in person with very experienced people at your disposal. Do not worry my friend.

They won't leave until they feel you won't break something.



G