Floor
Sign and furniture shop
Nest full sheets for sign and furniture with a shop bed and honest spoilboard.
Essentials on this floor
Runbooks to keep nearby
Two trades on one bed
Sign and furniture work share the same machine but want different things. Signage wants clean acrylic edges and crisp V-carving. Furniture wants square, chip-free melamine and accurate dados. A 1212 bed handles both if the tooling and the spoilboard are looked after.
Setting the day
Many shops run furniture nests in the morning and sign work after lunch, so the bit changes happen once instead of every hour. Keep sign bits and cabinet bits in separate labelled rows in the foam.
Materials to plan for
ACM panels, cast and extruded acrylic, MDF, melamine-faced chipboard and ply all arrive in full sheets. Store them flat, off the floor, and away from the door where dust and rain come in. Acrylic keeps its protective film on until the last moment.
Who runs this floor
A small team of two to five, often with one person who knows the router best and one learning.
A typical week
Board nests in the morning, sign work after lunch, with one bit change in between. Friday afternoon is for the bit audit and the spoilboard log.
The gear, in one line each
- Router 1212 Shop: Square-metre bed for sign and furniture shops that nest full sheets.
- Tooling Starter: End mills and V-bits curated for SA sheet goods and first nests.
- Dust Booth S: Compact extraction booth for single-router cells in emerging workshops.
Next step
Open the essentials above for specs, layout and care, and keep the runbooks nearby. When you are ready, email cnc@cncpme.co.za with your city, a floor sketch and the floor name in the subject. See projects for shops that ran a similar floor.
