Thanks buscht,
All very good questions. We are actually a hot tub manufacterer and use the "plastic wood" on the cabinets of our tubs. Only the door panels are machined so we are looking at around 50 doors per day between two shifts(25 per) which gives me a 18-20 minute per door cut time on a dedicated machine. The current process takes about 5 minutes on our motion master, which is pulling a lot of duty on other projects. We work 50+ weeks a year, 5 days a week, 2 shifts.
We are not dealing with exteme close accuracy issues and I think all the smaller machines are accurate to about .05" or better. Ease of operation is important. A dedicated door panel machine would lower the skill level because no change of probram or tooling would be involved. Just plug and play basically. And this operation is agian just a 3-axis machine. I am also starting to look for a small 5 axis machine(18"X24"). Oh the fun. Thanks agian for the help.
Trent Taylor
Bullfrog International
www.bullfrogspas.com