An investment of more than £100,000 in drilling technology is allowing Decorative Panels to finish drill the most complex patterns in a single pass.
The company’s Weeke BST 500 throughfeed drilling automat has been purpose-designed and manufactured to Decorative Panels’ own specifications. It is capable of 20 passes per minute on items such as kitchen cabinet end panels.
Operations director Malcolm Forward said versatility, precision and speed of throughput were all vital to the company, whose secondary manufacturing of cabinet furniture panel components under the Spectrum banner has been expanding steadily since its launch five years ago.
Customers who use the company’s paper foil laminated boards are also making use of the technology because their own shop floor machinery is not advanced enough to fulfil complex panel processing needs quickly enough.
Mr Forward said: “The cost implications of bottlenecks caused by problems like these adversely affect their own bottom line pricing strategies and so more and more companies are coming to us to help streamline their own manufacturing programmes.”
The Weeke is drilling an average of 7,000 panels per shift, irrespective of whether one or both sides of panels are processed.
It features 10 heads in the vertical plane and four in the horizontal. The computer control software can store 400 alternative processing programs, while all stops and clamps are constantly monitored during operations.
