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Custom staircases for homes can easily cost thousands to hundreds of thousands of dollars. To build these exclusive staircases, Rock Woodworks used the help of CAM software and new cutting equipment to deliver staircases with style and beauty along with precision fit.
Starting out as a general building contractor 25 years ago, Roger Rock found himself building staircases when his customers couldn’t find anyone else to do it. Though he was reluctant to build them, he gave his customer a price with a generous profit built in, and they accepted it. “Then people just kept coming and asking me to build stairs for them, so I figured I’d do it for a living,” he says. Currently the company builds stair casements, railing systems, circular and spiral staircases using metal or wood in traditional or contemporary styles.
Rock uses 2 Techno CNC routers which has allowed him to quickly produce precision wood components that fit together like a hand in a glove. To get this precision and quick turnaround, he uses Mastercam software to design his wood components and interface with the CNC router. “I got on the Internet, started looking for routers, and was attracted to Techno. When it came time for software, I was told by the distributor that Mastercam is better software, worth its price, and it would be money well spent. So, I took him at his word, and it’s been great,” Rock notes.
Rock found that at a price of roughly $35,000 each, few staircase makers could afford a CNC router, let alone two, giving him a competitive edge in his area. Rock says without the routers, he would close his doors and quit.
As to what he likes about Mastercam, he says, “The clear, illustrated dialog boxes help explain the program, and it speeds up the learning curve. One of the functions I like is that you can type fractions in you don’t happen to know the equivalent for and it automatically converts to a decimal.” Rock uses Mastercam for layout and renderings. “Whatever we draw in AutoCAD, we simply send it out to Mastercam and then to the router. We put in a point bit in the router’s spindle and scratch out a stairway system for a customer. We do a full-scale rendering of the whole rail system this way. Then we can take it to the job site, stand it up and it goes together precisely. This allows the customer, who is spending maybe $50,000 to $70,000 on a railing system, to see what it looks like in the house. There isn’t a week that goes by that we don’t think of another thing for Mastercam to do.”
Rock and his four employees are trained in Mastercam. As for its simplicity, he says that when they first purchased it, “we just got on the program and started working with it. We called or Sales rep a few times with questions, and we were on our way. “
With his router and Mastercam, Rock will be moving into a new niche market with his business by building circular stair kits and marketing them across the country. “We’re building these kits and putting them together, and they work perfectly. They’re easy to build, and just about anybody can put them together. Somebody might normally have to pay $10,000 for a staircase, but we’re able to get it to their doorway and they can install it themselves for $5,000. The money they save on the stairs, they’re putting into custom top railings. That’s where the eye appeal is.”
Rock Woodworks is growing and, with the help of CNC routers and Mastercam, they are a stepping up to new opportunities. |