CRATE MANUFACTURING

One of my previous jobs was to make wooden crates to be used as gift baskets for a local farm market store. The crate material started out as 2x4 dimensional lumber since it's readily available and fairly inexpensive. The lumber would then be ripped into flat and angled slats on a table saw. The slats are then cut to their respective lengths using a circular miter saw. Once the stock material has been cut to size, the parts can be assembled into crates using pneumatic staple guns. Crate bases and sides are first assembled as subassemblies to simplify and modularize the manufacturing process into discrete stations. The bases and sides are then connected together followed by stapling the final six slats in place to create a finished crate. The crates were also designed to be able to nest in stacks of three in order to conserve storage space. The assembly process is visualized below.

In order to produce these crates in large quantities, I created fixtures to more rapidly staple the base and side subassemblies together. The fixtures were designed in Autodesk Inventor and made using a solid wooden base and 3D printed parts that can be screwed into it so that they can be easily adjusted and replaced as needed. The fixtures are shown below with how the slats get loaded into them.

The more technical instructions I created on building these crates can be found below.