CNC Routing & Custom Parts
Derry and Londonderry

Derry is reached from the workshop by heading west on the A6 through Dungiven and over the Glenshane Pass. Substantial stretches of that road have been upgraded to dual carriageway, which has genuinely changed what is realistic to deliver in a day on this route compared with a few years ago. The Glenshane itself is the part worth planning around: it is high ground, and winter weather slows or occasionally closes it more often than anywhere else the parts travel. On a fixed handover in the middle of winter that is a scheduling conversation, not a reason to avoid the run. On routed furniture parts it matters most at the prototype stage, when a first-off part needs checking before the balance of a run is committed to material.

The work itself follows the town. Derry and Londonderry has a broad commercial base covering retail and hospitality fit-out, student and rental accommodation refurbishment, and a healthy independent joinery and furniture making trade, so an order arriving from here is more often a one-off or a short run than a rolling production schedule. Routing work rewards a repeat schedule, so a town with production furniture makers in it generates a different pattern of orders to one without.

Building stock is the other thing worth raising early. Around the city walls, the Waterside you are mostly looking at the walled city and the Victorian commercial and terraced streets around it, a large proportion of which is listed or within conservation areas. Further out there is extensive post-war housing on both banks, modern apartment and student accommodation, and industrial units toward Campsie and Springtown. Work of this kind out there is normally a straightforward measure and machine job. Inside and immediately around the walls the listed and conservation fabric is dense enough that an internal alteration should be checked with the council before the design is fixed, not after the parts are machined. For routed furniture the building matters less than the brief does, though a period property with uneven walls will change how much tolerance a fitted run needs designed into it.

None of this changes the price of a cut. MDF, birch plywood, poplar plywood, Valchromat, acrylic, HDPE, PVC and decorative furniture board all come through the same regional suppliers whichever town the parts are going to, so lead time is driven by board availability and machine time rather than by which road the delivery takes. Material choice affects feed speed and edge quality on a router more than it does on a straight cut, so it is worth agreeing before the order rather than midway through it.