
Robotic Wood Shop Has Ambitions to Challenge IKEA - NicoJuicy
https://hackaday.com/2018/03/09/robotic-wood-shop-has-ambitions-to-challenge-ikea/
======
ethagknight
My family owns a decent sized commercial millwork shop, which is a little
different from furniture mass production, and the title of this post made the
actual content look ridiculously silly. Cool demonstration for a home brew
project, but a long long long way to go before any sort of threat to furniture
builders like IKEA. Why that project received a grant when everything about
that demo is available in any furniture manufacturer, beats me. We have a
broad variety of crazy CNC machinery for production of architectural wood
products, all 100% custom. We don’t bother with IKEA tables because everything
else is far more profitable combined with that we don’t have a viable path to
selling 1,000,0000 cheap tables to be an IKEA

~~~
lucas_membrane
The advantage of the computer is not mass-production but mass customization.
How about putting something like this in the big-box hardware stores? They
will cut wood for you, but they will not make anything but simple straight
cuts, and the cost per cut is high. I like to try to make things from wood,
but I am a little too clumsy and accident-prone to want to do anything with
power tools. If there was idiot-proof CAD on-line at the hardware store site
where I could mess around with designs, see that everything fit together and
came out OK in 3D, and then order the pieces by credit card, I'm in.

~~~
skellera
I think push it a little more consumer-friendly and have made to order
furniture that you pick up locally. Completely customized at a normal price.

I believe this is where fashion will go. Items made specifically for the
person wearing it (perfect fit every time) but at a cost of mid-level fashion
because of advances in manufacturing.

~~~
Scoundreller
Total cost of ownership should be lower too:

1\. Perfectly fitting clothing will have more balanced wear.

2\. If I frequently break X seam, or Y button because I do a lot of Z, my next
items will have strengthened X and Y.

------
dawnerd
So two kuka arms and a saw is supposed to challenge IKEA? They've seen how
factories mass produce this stuff right? It's already extremely automated.

Thought I'd throw in a nice This Old House clip of this:
[https://youtu.be/so1ePMwR3mo?t=74](https://youtu.be/so1ePMwR3mo?t=74)

~~~
2muchcoffeeman
I suppose there is the customisation aspect of this. But I'm not sure that
having robots and buying timber is better than modding Ikea furniture.

~~~
camillomiller
I can’t wait to build a sharp-edged star table out of cheap pine

------
mturmon
This demo, coupled with the headline, really hits a sour note. So much about a
piece of furniture you care enough about to design and place into your home is
_not_ about getting just the right number of rays on your stellate-pattern
tabletop.

It's more about the exposed edges, the joinery, and the surfaces you will
touch. That's where your eyes are attracted. That's the tough stuff to resolve
cleanly when you design a piece. And that's a part that the knock-together
construction here is not going to help with.

I guess this might have a place with very simple pieces that really need to
fit in a certain space, say, between a wall and a fireplace.

~~~
camillomiller
Not everyone is a furniture designer, indeed. The best you can build with this
(very early stage) tech is useful contraptions.

------
deckard1
A miter saw with some janky robots sawing what looks to be a flimsy piece of
pine... is going to threaten IKEA?

OpenSCAD and parametric design is cool and all. But this is asinine. That's
the most charitable way I could put any of this nonsense.

> AutoSaw is a fun proof of concept and a glimpse at a potential future: One
> where a robotic wood shop is part of your local home improvement store’s
> lumber department. Ready to cut/drill/route pieces for you to take home and
> assemble.

First, you don't go to your local Home Depot for furniture-quality lumber.
Second, CNC furniture already exists and is way more impressive than this
demo[1] Third, CNCs are robots too.

I see this sort of devaluation of design and craftsmanship often in DIY and
elsewhere from people that don't know much about what makes IKEA special and
what woodworkers actually do. IKEA sells solid designs at affordable prices
using low cost but mostly durable materials. Woodworkers, on the other hand,
use high quality lumber, precision jointery, and careful finishing. The
finishing alone can sometimes take as long as building the entire project.
They carefully avoid knots and trouble spots, they know which way to cut and
glue according to grain, and they know about wood movement. They know that
hard and soft words are different, and they know that, well, _there are
different types of wood_. Shocking, right?

I'll take a solid design by actual designers rather than some parametric
customizable monstrosity. Flat pack or Eames. It really doesn't matter.

[1] [https://www.opendesk.cc/](https://www.opendesk.cc/)

------
Animats
Here's the commercial equivalent.[1] There's a whole industry making
customized kitchen cabinets. There's design software and CNC machines. There's
Cabinet Vision (software), and Cabinets Online (custom cabinets as a service.)
This is a well developed area.

[1]
[https://www.axyz.com/us/product/optimus/](https://www.axyz.com/us/product/optimus/)

------
CodeWriter23
Seems like their engineering team had a serious NIH problem. This project
should have been all software, and done in partnership with a local CNC-based
mill if they couldn’t get some loner equipment / shop time from a
manufacturer.

------
kumarski
I think this will work for certain modalities of products.

Deciding which products to replicate first is key.

------
jackhack
absurd. this automated chop saw will no more challenge IKEA than a kid making
balsa airplanes will challenge Airbus. It's interesting, but the ridiculous
hyperbole has to stop.

IKEA owes its success to clean design and the flat pack. not necessarily
manufacturing techniques

~~~
camillomiller
Don’t blame it on the researcher, it’s hackaday’s fault

