In early November, SCM Group UK held an in-house event which was designed to change how companies think about manufacturing and develop towards Industry 4.0 standards.
The three-day event at its Nottingham head office put forward a wide range of equipment showcasing the impressive breadth of options available from SCM.
Despite an early morning power supply hiccup, ultimately everything ran smoothly and a steady flow of visitors seemed engaged and inspired by SCM’s positive solutions for window and door manufacturing, furniture and panel manufacturing, edgebanding and drilling.
In addition, as is the norm with these events, SCM’s partners were well represented with software, tooling, edgebanding, finance and more all on hand throughout.
The impressive SCM Accord range of five-axis CNC machines was one of the key attractions of the event, with demonstrations running on demand producing sash windows and arches on the MATIC automatic table using SCM Maestro or Kosmosoft Archimede software – both of which offer simple and intuitive programming, giving users tremendous versatility.
SCM’s new innovation-packed Morbidelli CNC Author M100 showed its ability with door production with tandem loading, quick squaring, lock recess and hinge execution in three-axis mode. To demonstrate the Author’s capability, it was shown producing stair strings up to 6m long.
Impressive options are very much par for the course with SCM’s technical capability. The firm’s tried-and-tested window centre and moulder combination, the Dogma window centre and Superset NT automatic moulder, has a healthy productivity close to 30 windows per shift, and confirms how new touchscreen interfaces and traditional machining processes offer great quality, optimal precision and high productivity in a simple and very reliable manner.
In one focused area of the showroom, it was interesting to see a full suite of classical machines and sanders for all needs and investment levels. These included a Profiset 40 four-sided moulder, a Ti120 Class spindle moulder, aS520 surface planer, Sandya 1, 300 and 600 sanders and a Si350 table saw.
SCM’s experience and innovation in furniture and panel manufacturing has long been recognised, and its SCM and Morbidelli have been busy nesting for businesses large and small for many years.
SCM nesting is now getting even faster with tooling solutions allowing cutting speeds of up to 50m/min. The Universal 3122 cell with loading and unloading offers flexibility and productivity, and is backed by its Maestro Nest software, with optimisation paths to increase productivity up to 30%. For those that lack space in their factory, the SCM Pratix S22 leads the way in compact, high-speed nesting, with small ticket price and high productivity, starting from footprints of less than 20m2.
A critical gain for visitors to the show is that they were able to put both these CNC’s to the test.
In terms of edgebanding options, Stefani is one of the UK’s favourite soft-forming edgebanders. Its award-winning J-Shape solution demonstrates its innovative stance with edgebanding. Starting with options for the smaller workshop – the Minimax Me20, 35 and 40 are entry-level products from an impressive range of edgebanders.
At the show In Nottingham, the very capable K560, complete with AirFusion technology, was almost constantly being put through its paces. Its seamless joint line garnered universal admiration. The more industrial-level Solution XD, with its multi-edge automatic changeover system also impressed. With this machine, materials such as acrylic or aluminium edges with a protective film, high gloss materials, sanded or un-sanded wood and laser edges can be applied with control from the on-board touchscreen computer.
On the drilling front, the Morbidelli Cyflex SR was on show, a compact machine with vertical feeding of the panels to process all boring and routing patterns on nested or beam saw sized panels. It was quickly evident that its effective set-up, drilling speed and precision would bring immediate benefit where heavy drilling is required.
