Woodworking shop wanted - CNC cut and finish MDF panels

Looking for one shop to handle a small production run end to end. Machining, sanding, paint, and packing, all under your roof. I have spent the last week talking to shops that do one piece of this well and hand off the rest, and that is not what I want. If you cut it and you paint it in the same building, keep reading.

The work is a knock-down cover that goes over a radiator or a PTAC air conditioner. It arrives at the customer flat in a box and they put it together with a screwdriver and cam locks. Four panels make one cover: a front, a left side, a right side, and a top that lays on. You never assemble anything. You never glue anything.

Everything is 3/4in MDF, or Medex where I can get it. Nothing ultralight, it will not hold a cam housing. Biggest panel runs about 50in by 24in and the dimensions are different on every single order, which is really the whole point. I need a shop that is comfortable running batches of one rather than a thousand of the same part.

On the machining side, one front style carries eighteen through slots with radiused ends. The other is a solid panel with a 3in square edged frame and a shallow pocketed center, basically a shaker door. Both get tenon tabs and mortises for alignment, ten 15mm blind cam bores drilled 34mm in from the mating edge, and ten 8mm dowel bolt holes in the panel edges. Tell me your standard cam setout if 34mm is not it and I will redraw the files to suit your machine.

Paint is the part I care most about. Faces sanded to 180, every cut edge sealed and filled, primer, then two color coats where the order calls for a color. Some go out primed only. The slotted front has eighteen slot interiors that need the same treatment as the faces, and I already know that is the labor. I would rather pay a fair number for it than get it back looking rushed. Keep paint out of the cam bores and mortises or nothing will fit together.

Then flat pack it for parcel shipping, blind, no branding of yours in the carton, hardware bagged for each cover. I will give you the carton spec.

I am in Brooklyn and I ship panels to whoever is doing the work, so where you are does not matter and I cover freight both directions. I am running this ad around Philadelphia and Chester County because that corridor is full of shops doing custom cabinet and millwork machining as their day job, not as a favor.

Right now I have four covers sold with customers waiting on them. After that it is steady monthly volume and it is growing.

Write back with what you charge per cover or per square foot, your minimum per piece, how long you need, and whether the paint happens in your building or goes out to somebody else. Send a photo or two of painted work if you have it handy. Drawings and DXF files go out to anyone who asks.

Not taking outside work but you know someone within an hour who is? Send them my way, I would appreciate it.

Jacob T, Modern Radiator Covers, Brooklyn NY