I lucked out big time as far as this hobby goes and have a large (100,000 sft) cabinetry manufacturing facility that I am allowed to 'play' at on the weekends. I was wondering if anyone else is in the same shoes or has a similar situation that gets them access to some cool or unique equipment used for woodworking. If so, post up some pics, tell a little about it and any cool projects you've made with it.
I'll start with the nickel tour of my 'mame factory'. Sorry for the crappy photos, we didn't have time to wait for the lights to warm up when we took them so they are all a bit dark...
Giben Panel Saw: This is the one I know how to program and have been using for my project. It has an automated pusher bar that pushes and pulls the material into position and another that trues it up to a side fence. The vertical fence drops (it's down in the picture), the blades whip through (a scoring blade followed by a cutting blade), rinse and repeat. It has a 16' bed and can cut 3/4" material 4 deep. It also has a series of air tables in front that makes the material more or less weightless as you jockey it into position for the grippers on the pusher bar. This one was made in Italy.
Schelling Panel Saw: I don't know how to work this one (yet), or much about it, but I do know it's way more advanced than the Giben. Among other things, this one adds automated material loading. You put material by the bunk load on the back of it with a forklift and then catch the pieces as they come off the front. Pretty darn slick, too slick for me to figure out anyways, lol. This one was made in the UK.
Morbidelli Point-to-point: This machine and I have become pretty good friends. Obviously, this is where the majority of the programing and machining work happens for my mame cabinet. It has 3 axis and 4 zones. As it's setup now you can bore in all three axis and route in the main one. The main router has a 12.7mm (radius) upshear/downshear diamond cutter bit. One of the secondary routers is setup with a t-mold slotter. The work table uses vacuum cups to hold the part down which are adjustable side to side and front to back so you can get them out of harms way when need be. The table and the part are stationary and the machining head (the big black thing) moves around them. This one was also made in Italy.
Ima Edgebander: This is used to put on pvc or wood edgbanding (0.75-4mm). Not really useful for a mame cabinet because it isn't needed for t-molding. I will be using it for a few parts here and there on mine but not much. This is actually one of the more expensive machines even though it's job isn't much to write home about. You basically stick the part in the slot (left side, first picture) and it moves to the right as it goes through a number of different processes and then comes out on the other end with one finished edge. You need to repeat this for each edge you want finished and it will only work on straight edges. This one was also from the UK I believe.
I've made a few simple things in this factory, but this mame project is my first real taste of what these machines can do and how to make them do it. I have a prototype of my mame design done and assembled and am just finishing up the programing and design changes for the real one. Here is a pic of it but just remember this is a prototype (made of scrap material) and an incomplete one at that! Other than the very basic shape of it, pretty much everything will look different on the real one (it will be black for starters). Not even to mention there is obviously alot missing in the picture (edge treatments, a door, glass, the marquee, cpo, joys, trackball, ect...). I'll get some more pics and hopefully some video when I make the real one for a project thread so stay tuned for that.