The combined systems, introduced by FICEP more than a decade ago, have met a constantly increasing demand from the market. This is mainly due to the many advantages of this system, that can be summarized as follows:

• Requires less than half the space of a conventional split system
• Smaller capital investment as the system has common elements between the two lines (CNC - rollerways - tables - service equipment)
• The personnel working on the system can be reduced to one single operator
• The handling of material is greatly reduced
• Possibility to obtain very short final workpieces automatically, both drilled and cut. Drill operator no longer waits for the saw operator or vice versa
• Best accuracy due to only one setup for the whole production
  

The approach of Ficep is combining a saw or a thermal coping robot in tandem with a drill to engineer a total integrated solution rather than placing a free-standing saw / coping robot next to the drill. This approach permits the combined system to function as truly one CNC work center rather than two machines that sit side-by-side but do not perform as one fully automatic CNC work center.