Components – Computer Numeric Control for Precision

Brooke: Brant, if this is where you make your shutter components, why do we only see rails and louvers?

Brant: That’s pretty observant Brooke. On our panels with the horizontal louvers, louvers and rails are the only components we build to stock. That’s all we do in this area.

Brooke: What about styles and tilt rods?

Brant: On those we just stock the molded profiles, the styles and tilt rods get processed in our pre-assembly.

Brooke: So here is where the louvers and rails are made. What are the processes?

George: We use CNC machining centers to form the primary tenons.

Brooke: For those that don’t know, explain CNC.

George: CNC stands for Computer Numeric Control. Most people use conventional double end tenoners. We like CNC for their precision. We can hold a machine shop tolerance on our louver and rail shoulder width.

Brooke: How close is that?

George: Plus or minus five thousandths.

Brooke: That’s close!

George: CNC’s are also good for fast setup and short runs. Our hold-down fixturing has an infrared system to tell the computer what size to run. So the setup’s automatic.

We just set the hold-down on a size, load the louver and rail moldings, and the rest the machine does.

Brooke: I see these louver tenons come out square. You must have a secondary process?

George: Yes we do. We round the tenons in our louver processor where we also add a staple to connect to the tilt rod.

Brooke: I know most shutters have nylon pins on the louvers instead of tenons — why not use pins?

Brant: The nylon pins are ok, but our louver tenons are far stronger because our monolithic tenon is formed right out of the louver profile. A shutter does get some abuse, even in residential use, but our tenons will stand up to quite a bit of abuse.

Brooke: So with tenons you have fewer broken louvers. What about louvers coming loose from the tilt bar? Isn’t that a bigger problem?

Brant: You’re absolutely correct, Brooke. The problem is that the staples on the back of the tilt rod are the ones that come out.

We solved that problem by using a linkage rod instead. But we won’t get too far ahead of ourselves and instead, visit our pre-assembly and assembly section where I’ll show you our tilt rod linkage.