In order to minimize scrap and to generally work more cost-efficient, Kai Altstaedt decided to purchase a STEPCRAFT D.420 and experienced a “creative explosion”.
To counterbalance his job as a project manager at a concern in the automotive sector, Kai Altstaedt produces docking stations out of wood for different devices in his free time. He is not only fascinated by the construction of parts but also by their economic construction. With Holz Design Altstaedt he distributes his products on various internet platforms.
“After I had built my first charging station I showed it to my colleagues. They were thrilled and encouraged me to sell my models on DaWanda,” remembers Kai Altstaedt. As this did not include any financial risk, it was exactly this platform where he opened his first shop in March 2015 before offering his products on Amazon and Etsy, too. However, the high scrap he had, due to his production process with a manually operated router and a template, bothered him. When milling the logo the material often broke away on one specific point. “If you destroy more than three rear panels in a batch of 20 docking stations, you need to repeat all previous work steps for these three exemplars including the set-up times. The entire scaling effects of producing 20 at the same time cease to exist immediately,” describes the project manager and continues: “This was exactly the point where I decided to buy a CNC router to produce the rear panel of the Lambdas: inserting, milling, ready.”
Therefore, it is hardly surprising that that he could reduce the overall development time of nine months for the Lambda to only two months for the BoMoDo even though the design was more elaborate due to the increased number of screws. “Without CNC technology I would not be able to realize such designs ad products in regard to production expenditure. The hourly gross rate that I could earn with my models would be disastrous,” explains the project manager. Thus, he optimized the production of the BoMoDo to the extent that the article requires only a double-digit numbers of minutes. All necessary components are milled out of a 20 cm long piece of wood in just one single process. This leaves only a couple of manual work steps to the finished product.
With the STEPCRAFT D.420 the project manager could accelerate his development and production process and could reduce the error rate as well as the scrap to a minimum. This led to cost optimizations that increased his hourly gross rate. “It is an extended hobby and that is what is should stay. However, I would not have any fun if the production would not realizable in a commercial way,” states Kai Altstaedt. This is why the future abandonment of CNC technology is especially one thing for him – unthinkable.