Thorogood Timber plc has invested about £150,000 in Weinig machinery to meet a growing demand for specialised mouldings.
The Colchester-based company says it is taking an increasing amount of repeat orders for bespoke matching profiles, with short runs down to 10-75m now common.
The Weinig Powermat 1000 replaces a Wadkin GA moulder, but the company will still operate an older Wadkin Sigma machine.
Production director Trevor Thorogood said job changeover times had reduced from one hour to 20 minutes since the investment, while throughput has grown from 4,500m to 6,000m per day.
He said the the extra ability of the Powermat had allowed the company to keep the numbers of moulders to two, which saves it having to invest in a new mill because of a lack of space.
Mr Thorogood said the firm could buy a further Powermat in the future to replace the Sigma yet keep the numbers of moulders to two.
The 12,000rpm Powermat 1000 features six heads, motorised axes, a splitting operation and a PowerCom touch screen which is linked to an OptiControl tool measuring stand in the toolroom.
Thorogood’s investment also includes a Weinig Rondamat 960 profile grinder, a template maker and PowerLock tooling.
Mr Thorogood said template making used to take about two hours but the Weinig template maker, which uses plastic material, has reduced the process to just five minutes.
