fdmonline.com
Making custom
benefit customers
Delivering benefits rather than features and staying ahead
of design trends has helped a custom cabinet manufacturer improve.
By Karl D. Forth, Editor-in-chief
kforth@wattnet.net
Pennville can mimic any historical style, period finishes and
curved carvings. Stanford Collection is a limited line of face
frame cabinets that still allows
customizable sizes and almost all
of the company’s special interior
accessories. Europenn Frameless
Cabinetry is the all-wood frameless version of Pennville with all of the latest
European trends available.
All doors (except a few painted MDF
doors) are solid wood, including center
panels. Case construction is all plywood
with matching veneers on exposed ends
and birch or maple interiors. Drawers
are 5/8-inch soft maple with 1/2-inch
plywood bottoms, and Blumotion
drawer glides are standard. Almost half
of the doors offered are 5/4-inch thick.
Kitchen Pond is used for order
entry, both for dealers and in-house
engineers, and Pen-
nville uses Pattern
Systems to break
down parts and com-
municate with CNC
equipment.
Once the engineer-
ing department has broken
down a page of orders (approxi-
mately 100 cabinets), an SCM Alfa pan-
el saw cuts the parts. Then the parts
are machined on either a Morbidelli
504 or X5 five-axis router. While this
is happening, doors, face frames and
drawers are assembled. Once the parts
are cut, they either go to the normal or
special building department.
General manager Eric Harrell’s
responsibility is to take a design and
then build it. He’s skilled in all aspects of
woodworking and knows all the equip-
ment. Robert Houston, engineering
manager, has been converting
abstract orders into cutlists for
continued
Paint preferred, walnut
wanted, distressed
requested
Style trends that Pennville is seeing:
●
Contemporary cabinetry is
regaining popularity
●
Increased interest in green
products
●
Increased use of painted finishes
●
Darker finishes
●
More use of walnut in traditional
and contemporary
●
Thicker doors seem to be preferred
●
Distressed finishes popular but not
new. Used in an old-world look or
a modern look
Vega lathe and SCMI T-130 shaper are used
for many jobs in the Portland, Ind., shop.
