The W14 exhibition at the NEC in Birmingham provided an opportunity for Daltons Wadkin to display its impressive array of high profile machinery brands within the UK marketplace.
The company, currently in its 113th year, has moved with the times and in order to reflect current demand across a wide range of industries, its focus is now very much on providing specialist machinery to suit individual requirements whether a customer represents the traditional solid timber and joinery sector, furniture manufacturers, public authorities or industries as far-reaching and diverse as motor manufacturing and aerospace.
The many visitors to its stand at W14 will have immediately noticed the change of emphasis when confronted with sophisticated equipment for the panel industry – featuring Kimla and Greda CNC machining centres, Nimac beam saws, Altendorf sliding table panel saws and Elcon vertical panel cutting equipment – including incidentally the impressive, fully-automated and programmable Quadra.
The company is following trends and demand from an increasingly wide range of customers and feels it now has a range of equipment to match or surpass anything alternative manufacturers have to offer.
In particular strong interest was expressed at W14 in the CNC machining centres and also – very possibly the first for this exhibition – the Kimla five-axis Streamcut water-jet machine, which is designed to cut a range of materials – from steel through wood and plastics to even stone, and is capable of unusually high cutting speeds being driven by a high-pressure water and aggregate mix.
The Kimla products were powered up and performing throughout the show and attracted many onlookers and potential customers.
The Kimla BPF1731 CNC machine, incorporating gantry with three axes and matrix bed, was sold to London-based timber importer and merchant T Brewer and Company and its director Keith Fryer was keen to see the machine being put through its paces on the stand.
Salvador crosscutting systems were also major exhibits on the Daltons Wadkin stand and featured a Superpush 200 system with automatic rotation and ejection outfeed system, a Super Angle 600 and the smaller budget-priced Classic 50. A Salvador technician flew over from the manufacturer’s base in Italy and was busy demonstrating throughout the show. Many enquiries were received which, the company says, it is hoped will bolster an increasing number of successes with this equipment throughout the UK and Ireland.
Elcon vertical panel saws again featured strongly and the unique Limpio model – designed so that dust can be extracted from both sides of the panel whilst cutting – attracted much interest. The major machine however was the Elcon Quadra which is a fully-programmable and automatic, vertical panel sizing machine with advanced clamping. This virtual ‘beam saw’ was demonstrated to great effect throughout the exhibition, again attracting much interest.
A Stenner ST100R band resaw was sold to Gibraltar Joinery and Building Services, a Kuper XL6 planer moulder is on its way to old-established Norwich timber merchant, A & W Cushion, and an Altendorf Elmo 4 fully-programmable sliding table panel saw is destined for P M Products in Dudley, West Midlands.
Other equipment on display included a CML multi-rip saw with moving saws from Italian manufacturer CML, one of the Nimac fully-programmable beam saws for which the company is the sole UK distributor, a range of Maggi machines for edgebanding and horizontal boring alongside examples from the Wadkin machine range, for which the company is manufacturer and sole distributor.
All this was presented under Daltons Wadkin’s new ‘machine smarter’ slogan which was highlighted on large signs above the stands and which sum up the company’s involvement in an increasingly wide range of high quality and often CNC-controlled equipment for a diverse range of industries.
