Picture this. You’ve just won a six-figure contract to manufacturer interior wall and ceiling panels for a prestigious, multi-million-pound hotel conversion in London. The brief is set, and your start date is imminent but your existing edgebander doesn’t have the capabilities required to complete the job. Who do you count on to supply the right machinery at short notice? For high-end interiors company, Bulgaro, it was Holz-Her UK who was able to supply and install a Sprint 1327 Door edgebander (formally the Sprint 1327 Massiv) within seven days.
The project, when completed in 2025, will see a famous London landmark transformed into a luxury hotel and necessitates the manufacture of thousands of veneered wall and ceiling panels made from Fermacell, a fire-resistant, multi-purpose building board. “It’s a notoriously difficult material to machine,” explains Matthew Saywell, Bulgaro’s CNC Department Manager. “It’s heavy. An 18mm board weighs 80kg. It’s very fragile until it’s finished and as soon as it is cut-to-size, a fine dust sits on the surface that you simply can’t get rid of. This dust means conventional hot melt and PUR machines equipped with roller applicators struggle with the dusty, fibrous board.”
Matthew continues, “Our existing edgebander couldn’t apply the right adhesion because of the glue roller system on board. To complete this project, we would have ended up hand lipping and trimming each panel. This would have taken far too much time. We needed an edgebander that could not only offer a PUR gluing system that could work effectively with Fermacell, but also one that could apply solid lippings to a variety of panel sizes. For this project, panels could range from 300mm squared to 3000mm x 1200mm and work pieces in thicknesses between 12-18mm. To maintain their fire-resistant design, we also needed to apply solid wood tapes and lippings between 1-10mm.” But there was one more critical element to the company’s brief. Matthew says, “We needed it straightaway.”
Bulgaro had been speaking to Holz-Her, along with other machinery manufacturers, in 2023 about replacing their existing edgebander for a larger, more comprehensive model. However, this contract propelled their plans. Following a successful demonstration at their Abingdon showroom, Holz-Her UK were able to source, deliver and install a new Sprint 1327 Door edgebander to Bulgaro in less than a week.
Not only did this fit the timescale perfectly, the Sprint 1327 Door was the ideal model for the growing company. Built with a heavy duty MG705 edge feeder, it’s a robust piece of kit that is designed to work with weighty and challenging materials. It also includes Holz-Her’s patented Glu Jet gluing system which provides outstanding results irrespective of the substrate. Designed to switch effortlessly between PUR and EVA in just four minutes, it also boasts a three-minute heat up time, adaptive gluing pressures, automatic glue quantity control and a repeatable zero glue line.
“The gluing system won us over straight away and was the best we’d seen by far,” admits Matthew. “The operators get a real time view of how much glue they have left and how many jobs they can complete before needing to replace the cartridge. It’s also really easy to clean and offers a neat, consistent finish. Cleaning is also as easy as it gets. On our older edgebander, we have to clean the Glu Pot. This often requires two people to do it. Now, you simply press a button and the automatic cleaning cycle starts. It’s child’s play.”
The edgebander also offers Intelligent Tool Correction that allows the operator to make fine adjustments from 0.1–0.01mm to the profiling and fa.s.t technology that enables you to run different machining processes at the same time – making it possible to switch between different programmes without the need for the piece to exit the machine first.
“This has to be one of the best features on the machine,” says Matthew. “We have so many size variations to work with, but we have complete confidence in the accurate set-up of each job. One stack of panels may need a 1mm lipping applied and the next may need a 10mm lipping applied. The operator simply needs to read the label and input the data via the touch screen display or with the aid of a barcode scanner to change the measurements – all while the existing boards are still on the track. The time this saves is huge and there’s no manual set-up or downtime.
Thanks to the machine’s intuitive features and easy set-up, the edgebander’s breaking in period has been very short. “Holz-Her trained two operators on the machine and they picked it up very quickly. The software has been designed for ease of use and it just makes sense. With so few young people entering the industry, the simple operation of a machine is always in the back of my mind. Nothing will replace the skill and knowledge of an experienced joiner but simplifying our processes can only benefit us going forward.”
Whilst the project is still ongoing, the Sprint has now been running for 12 weeks. “It’s safe to say the edgebander has paid for itself already,” says Matthew. “We’ve used 15,000 metres of edging to date and that’s without the need to run double shifts. It works a solid 10-hour day and runs up to 18m/min. If we were edging a straightforward material like MDF, we could add another 30-40% to our current capacity quite easily without increasing our overheads. Once this project is completed, the new edgebander will also help us grow our fire door products and will give us more control over the cost, lead time and quality of our manufacturing processes.”
Matthew concludes, “The professionalism shown in this very quick exchange was fantastic and everything went like clockwork. As for the edgebander, it hasn’t disappointed. The gluing system really makes this machine. It’s head and shoulders above the rest and has ultimately made this project possible for us to complete. We couldn’t recommend the Sprint or the Glu Jet more highly and look forward to working with Holz-Her again.”
