Timber engineering specialist David Smith has installed a Boere wide-belt sanding line to help grow capacity in its architectural door business.
The Cambridgeshire company, which also has divisions manufacturing roof trusses, custom-built staircases and TJI joists, invested about £80,000 in the line supplied by Boere UK. It had previously operated a Boere 1100mm two-head sander.
Many of the doors and doorsets made at David Smith’s St Ives factory are high performance products designed to conform with legislative requirements, including fire resistance and smoke control; hygiene and cleanliness; X-ray protection; and security and sound-proofing.
The new line, installed in January, comprises a Boere Elite 1300 BCS bottom working sander linked by a powered interlink conveyor to an Elite 1300 TCS top working machine. It is designed to calibrate doors in excess of 120kg to within 0.2mm.
Both machines are basically identical, despite being vertically opposed configurations. The working width and height are 1300mm and 150mm respectively, while belts lengths are 1900mm.
They have infeed and outfeed roller tables of 2000mm and a 5-25m/min variable feed speed controlled by a frequency controller with an electronic digital readout on a central control panel. Feed height is constant through the line at 970mm.
The first head in each unit is a hardened chrome steel contact roller combined with a sanding pad, while the second is an electronically controlled pad.
The interlink conveyor has a PVC anti-static powered belt lengthened to 3000mm to provide an in-process quality inspection station between machines.
