August/September 2011 - PAWPRINT PUBLISHING

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PANELS & PANEL PROCESSING Holz-Her sales & service exclusively from Weinig UK Holz-Her’s range of products Edgebander Vertical saw Beam saw Machine centre SINCE the take over of Holz-Her by Weinig AG, 15 months ago, Weinig UK has taken on exclusive full responsibility for the sales and service of the complete range of Holz-Her products in England, Scotland and Wales. All new sales and service requirements are handled by Weinig UK. Holz-Her customers can be assured of the same high level of service care that Weinig UK provides on its existing range of products. Weinig values prompt, efficient Investment completed ENGINEERED wood-based panel manufacturer, Norbord, has completed the final phase of a £25 million investment programme at its site in Cowie, Scotland. The investment improves and extends the particleboard operations and includes the replacement of a forming station and pre-press components. Karl Morris, managing director of Norbord Europe, said: “The installation of a state-of-the-art continuous press has already allowed us to considerably grow our market share in flooring and other construction-related products. “Work continued on a ‘24 hours a day, seven days a week’ basis while the forming stations were replaced and the new forming bins installed. “The completion of the final stage of works has provided us with added operating flexibility, a broader product mix, further quality improvements, capacity growth of over 10% and a reduction in total manufacturing costs. “These cost reductions are important as we strive to partially offset rising wood costs which are under pressure due to strong competition from the energy sector.” Norbord currently employs more than 250 people at its Cowie plant and a further 120 at a sister site in and reliable after-sales and offers a totally dependable service tailored to individual customer’s needs. The comprehensive Weinig service includes planned service contracts and individual training from its base in Abingdon. Morayhill near Inverness. It also employs in excess of 400 people at its plant in South Molton, Devon. Contacts for sales and service are: Paul Nightingale, Sales Manager; and Shaun Crump, Service Manager. Michael Weinig (UK) Ltd Tel 01235 557600 Email sales-uk@weinig.com www.weinig.co.uk Norbord Tel 01786 812921 www.norbord.com Page 26 Panel, Wood & Solid Surface August/September 2011
PANELS & PANEL PROCESSING Alphacam serves up furniture winners A STUNNING combined reception desk, seating area and logo at the headquarters of leading fashion label Fred Perry, won a top industry award for a Cambridgeshire woodworking company. Along with the architects and materials supplier, The Cutting Room jointly won the Furniture Category of The Wood Awards 2010 for the highly complex project comprising 405 individually-shaped components made from 18 mm birch plywood, which has a finished length of 7·3 m and weighs 2·5 tonnes. Cutting Room partner, Mark Durey, was delighted with the win, as the company is not a furniture maker, but a component manufacturer and CNC routing specialist. And he says the CAD/CAM software, Alphacam Advanced Router, was vital in helping the company produce the required effect. The original concept model was created in Rhino3D by Amr Assaad, an associate at architects Buckley Gray Yeoman, who liaised closely with The Cutting Room during the early stages about what they needed for the CAD file. The design was then swivelled and laid flat. “Once it became flat Alphacam managed the rest of the operation, through to generating the machine code for our Anderson Duo router that manufactured all the parts. We took a series of slices and put holes through for the dowels, which we did partly as a surface and partly as a solid model. Then we took the slices out and spun them into a plan view before nesting them into sheets.” He says Alphacam was instrumental in overcoming surface layer issues that could not be handled in Rhino. “We pulled in all the slices of different heights and progressed with the zero surface command. Once we’d got that, we ensured the geometry connected, which is very easy to do with the break function — and that’s absolutely vital for this type of work, showing where the geometry is open and manipulating the geometry to close it.” Thousands of lines of Alphacam CNC code were generated to create the toolpaths necessary to ensure that each of the individual panels was correctly shaped and had accurately placed dowel holes. Once the components had all been made, the unit was built over two days at The Cutting Room’s Huntingdon workshop to check everything was absolutely right; it then took a day to disassemble it, and a further two days to reassemble it at Fred Perry’s Covent Garden headquarters in London. “While almost all of the 405 components were different, we had every confidence that our Anderson Duo could produce the high precision work needed to make this project a success,” says Mark Durey. “Although it is quite old, we feel it is more robust than many new CNC routers, and Alphacam gives it the full capability of the more modern machines.” The Anderson has two heads with eight-station auto tool changers, along with twin 1,600 mm x 1,600 mm beds which were used as one large 3,200 mm x 1,600 mm bed for the Fred Perry project. The shaped components were cut from a total of 70 sheets of 10 ft x 5 ft birch ply. Once they had all been produced, hand sanding the 1,800 m of plywood edge then became a key element. “All edges were lacquered three times — meaning we sanded more than 5,000 metres of edge, plus the surfaces!” As well as undertaking the unusual one-off projects, The Cutting Room manufactures a variety of kitchen, bedroom and bathroom cupboard doors, on an SCM Routomat 3. The company also uses an SCM Record 220 router with a single 10-station auto tool changer and 16 spindle drill block, mainly for the 3D work which makes up around 5% of the company’s turnover, along with overspill from the other two machines. All three CNC routers are driven by Alphacam. When The Cutting Room got its first CNC router, the company was putting the code in by hand and working out the dimensions on graph paper. “Then I saw how Alphacam would be ideal for putting our toolpaths in, so I bought it straight away. That was about 20 years ago, and I’ve used Alphacam ever since as it’s absolutely the best software for our needs. “The more accurately we can work, the better, and that’s what Alphacam gives us. Working with Alphacam means we’re working to perfection. In the office we work to perfection on the programming, then in ‘real life’ when it gets to the machine, it’s also perfect, making it ideal for the quick turnaround 2D work that we do, especially the 2D panels and fascia doors that make up the majority of our turnover. And it easily handles our small number of 3D jobs. “It does everything we want it to … we owe our living to Alphacam.” Planit Software Tel 01233 506100 www.alphacam.com Panel, Wood & Solid Surface August/September 2011 Page 27
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August/September 2011 - PAWPRINT PUBLISHING

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