A Sneak Peek
Our manufacturing facility is located in Southeastern PA and benefits from a local population with a heavy concentration of woodworking skills and resources because we are located in the heart of PA’s Amish and Mennonite communities.
Our facility has an extensive array of modern and efficient woodworking equipment. Our woodworking staff is highly technical and trained on all aspects of our production process. Artisan utilizes advanced equipment such as CNC machines and milling machines for making our parts because this equipment provides great accuracy and reproducibility.
Milling & Parts
Using the customer-approved shop drawing, our process begins in the rough mill for sizing and surfacing, moves through the parts operations where all parts are carefully machined to meet our exacting standards, and ends up on a cart destined for assembly or our Pre-Finishing area.
Window Grilles
If your door has window glass in it, it usually has a window grille or a true-divided lite system. Again, using the shop drawing for your door, our grilles are handcrafted and carefully mitered together and then added to the cart headed to pre-finishing, if you have elected a factory finish, or the grilles go to the window installation area to wait for the door to be assembled.
Pre-Finishing
Only those doors receiving a factory finish enter our paint room in parts. Our manufacturing process has been designed to allow a finish to be applied, on most models, to all door components PRIOR to assembly. Whether your door is made from wood, raw cellular vinyl or a composite material, pre-finishing allows the finish color to cover all edges of the door parts and ensures that during normal expansion and contraction of door materials, no raw and unfinished edges are exposed. This is just one example of the care we build into our doors.
Assembly
We have numerous assembly areas in our shop. Core frames are constructed and cut to fit your shop drawing sections while the face frames are assembled on one of our many assembly tables. Then we marry the face frame to the core frame using fasteners, adhesives and a proprietary process developed in house to form an assembled unit. The one-piece unit is then cut into overhead sections through the face frames. Each section is then inspected and appropriately sanded before being caulked and moved to the next step.
Finishing & Inspection
If you have elected a factory finish, your door proceeds to the paint room for its final finish. We have a spray booth capable of handling our widest doors, and we use waterbourne finish systems for both our paint and stain finishes. Faux Stain paint finishes receive a layer of a protective top coat.
Wrapping It Up
After finishing, window glass and grilles are installed. We predrill for all on-door hardware, installing struts where needed. A final inspection of your door is completed with all door sections together so we see what you will see when it arrives and is unwrapped. Every section of every door gets its own protective packaging, and we are ready to ship.