When M & R Joinery needed a larger capacity sander to save time and help create a cleaner working environment, Kündig was the company’s supplier of choice.
M & R Joinery Services Ltd is a premier manufacturer and installer of traditional timber windows and doors in the North West of England. Operating out of a manufacturing facility in Knowsley, Liverpool, with its excellent transport links, the company offers a nationwide service, from initial quote through to surveying, manufacturing, installation and aftersales.
Recently, the company has invested in a Kündig Premium-2 1350 RP sander customised for work with joinery, from Carl O’Meara of Kündig Ltd.
“We needed a wide belt sander to save time and to reduce the dust in the workshop,” M & R’s Phillip Levensen says. “Before we bought the Kündig we were using hand held sanders, so the belt size on that is 100 mm wide while the belt on the Kündig is 1.3m wide: that is, 13 times the width of the hand held sander!
“So the precision is much better and there is much less dust: with a hand held device even with a dust bag fitted the environment can become quite dusty. The Kündig sander has its own dust extraction system, which cost a few thousand pounds, but is separate to the dust extraction system for the other machines. It is better for the workshop in terms of dust: and we can put more items through it and more quickly than using a little portable hand-held tool.
“A wide-belt sander is much more expensive than a hand-held tool, but we did some trials at Carl’s place and were very pleased with the results. We had only used the sander a couple of times when we agreed to buy it!
“During the three month turnaround, waiting for the sander to arrive after it had been ordered, we felt we could not go back to using the hand held sander, because a wide-belt sander saves so much time, so Carl let us use his sander when necessary. I felt a bit cheeky because we were arriving with so much product, but Carl was fine with this, saying use it as much as you like while waiting for the machine to arrive. We visited Kündig Ltd five or six times within that period.
“There was one particular evening we used it, we got there 2pm or 3pm, I didn’t realise how much stuff we had in the van and we left at 8pm: we reckon that the work would have taken one man about 40 hours using the hand held sander, but we did it in about four to five hours on the machine. It was pretty unbelievable, really!”
Phillip added: “Carl O’Meara was quite instrumental in the choice of sander. If you like the person and get on with the person, you are halfway there to doing business. Carl was really, really helpful and he went the extra mile. We get on so well with Carl that we have spoken to him since concerning other machinery for our workshop.”
He continued: “We had never had a widebelt sanding machine in our workshop before. When my brother and I entered the business at different stages, my Dad had everything the business needed to do the job. There is always bigger and better machinery out there, but we had what we needed.
“Over the last few years my brother and I have taken the business over and have replaced a couple of machines that were old and needed replacing. As we are successful and get a lot of business we have continued to invest, and with the sander we are now at the next level: it has speeded up the process. Most people have a wide-belt sander, and so this was the first thing we invested in for something we have never had.
“We never had any benchmark: we didn’t know what they cost or which brand was better. We received a recommendation from the guy who does our maintenance: he spoke highly of Carl and said the Kündig sander was ‘the Rolls Royce of wide-belt sanding’. It was the first one we really looked at.
“We did make other enquiries, but one advantage of the Kündig sander is that when you get different thicknesses with other machines you have to open up and close the machine to the different thicknesses, while on a Kündig the heads move up and down rather than the table, which is an advantage as the working height remains the same. The technology behind it is very precise: it is an excellent machine.”
The Kündig Premium sander is available in widths from 650mm to 1600mm, with larger widths available on request: Phillip chose the 1350mm because 75-80% of the windows can go through the machine as complete products, and those that are too wide can go through in component form before assembly, “which speeds things up as well”.
When asked if he would recommend the Kündig Premium sander, Phillip replied: “Yes, highly. I would recommend it to anyone who has got a joiner’s shop.”
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