Wood has always been the top natural material and will continue to be for some time to come. It has been used as a construction material for buildings and furniture for thousands of years. The advantages of wood speak for themselves: this renewable material combines two key aspects like no other – low density with high stability. These make wood especially interesting when it comes to building, since it can insulate heat and fulfil a range of static requirements. An extensive woodworking industry has been developed over millennia which still takes a leading role today.

Woodworking encompasses all the methods used in manufacturing and processing wooden surfaces. These include processes to create shapes (machining or abrasion) as well as machine designs or apply colours to the wood.

The wide range of woodwork machinery starts with simple manually-operated tools and ends with large-scale industrial woodworking machines. In most cases, wood machinery works by machining the material or scraping off layers to attain the desired form using a wide selection of tools. However, there are woodwork machines that maintain the volume and mass of the material while transforming its shape. Wood can also be bent to any shape needed using pressured steam, which does not alter any of the positive aspects of wood.

The range of woodworking tools and machinery available are best explained by following the journey of the material from its beginnings as a tree trunk to the completed product.

The milling machine is also a key piece of kit for woodworking operations. Instead of a saw blade, mills operate using a rotating sawing head whose design determines the milling edge profile. Milling machines are used to manufacture wooden profiles and to machine individual contours into panels and solid materials. A wide selection of tools has also been engineered for woodworking mills. The smallest and simplest mills are known as routers, which are used as joinery machinery by many carpenters. Once equipped to a work table and fitted with a mechanical stop, routers transform into spindle moulders. This is the standard tool for manufacturing wooden profiles, such as skirting boards or window frames. The highest quality mills are CNC milling machines. These feature a milling head that can pass through a wooden block on all sides via three to five axes to create every type of product

CNC mills are used to create serial-quality complex contours and primarily differ from metalworking machines in terms of their rigidity. Wood being a relatively soft material means that the machines do not need to withstand the enormous resistance and strain experienced by metalworking mills. In place of a cooling lubrication unit, CNC woodworking machines rely on powerful extraction. Extraction is particularly essential for wood processing since complex machines are very sensitive to accumulations of dust.

Another key difference is the relative lack of 3D processing compared to metalworking. However, CNC technology is very important within 2D woodworking, which is why the majority of CNC woodworking machinery is found in the panel-working sector. It is used to mill precise and consistent contours into specific panel materials across a range of scales.

Bore holes are often introduced to wooden products for pins, threaded pins, bolts and much more to be inserted.

The hand drill is one of the oldest types of woodworking equipment, which has since developed into a number of powerful electric drills and highly efficient drilling stations. Using these, any type of bore hole pattern can be drilled into a material with consistently precise results. Boring machines are sought-after for furniture manufacturing and are especially ideal for chipboard processing.

The drilling machine range is also home to dowelling machines, which are used to place dowels and pins into pre-drilled holes. This makes flat-pack furniture possible where a number of different parts need to be put together by the customer to form the final product. Without drilling and dowelling machines, the furniture world as we know it would be very different.

Wood-turning lathes

The wood-turning lathe is the cornerstone of every carpentry operation. Anything that needs to be made round can be processed on this predecessor of the regular lathe. The wooden material is clamped in place and rotated longitudinally. A chisel tool can then be used to create a contour around the entire circumference of the item. The simplest wood-turning lathes are expansion units for regular drilling machines. Today’s industrial wood-turning lathes are computer controlled and can be relied upon to deliver workpieces of consistent quality and dimensions.

Final polish

Grinding and polishing machines are responsible for performing the final processes of woodworking. They scrape off the smallest imperfections and create a soft and smooth basis for ongoing machining. The machines used are belt- and plate grinders, which can take the form of electrical hand-held tools through to industrial machinery for large-scale serial production.