Lars Bettler is making a built-in cabinet. He has already cut the panels on the vertical panel saw and had them processed by one of the two CNC specialists at the company. Now it's time for edgebanding: white edges with white adhesive for the carcass and an oak decor with transparent adhesive for the fronts. Apparently, he's the first one at the machine this morning.
The still-cold glue pot contains transparent EVA adhesive. So he starts with the fronts. He switches the machine on via the touchscreen, selects the program, and once the adhesive has heated up, he runs the workpieces through the machine.
For the white carcass, the glue color needs to be changed to white. In just a few simple steps, the joiner releases the hot gluing unit, lifts it out of the machine, places it in its parking station next to the machine, and swaps in the other one with the white adhesive. The carcass edge is thicker than that of the fronts, so he also changes the program.
60 employees, 800 m² showroom
The joinery Geiger-Keim employs 60 people on its 5500 m² premises and specializes in furniture and interior finishing, while also manufacturing uPVC windows as well as aluminum doors and windows. In a separate 1800 m² office and showroom building, the company displays its product range over an area of 800 m².
Its customers include private households and property developers within a 150 km radius. The interior finishing division has 30 employees, 25 of whom work in the workshop and on-site. For design and production planning, the furniture/interior finishing division uses Palette CAD. During cutting, each workpiece receives a label with all the information for further processing.
Edgebanding was the bottleneck
Five years ago, the workflow at the aging edgebander repeatedly came to a halt. Only a few employees on the team were able to set up the machine correctly. Adhesive residue and edge banding overhangs had to be patiently removed in a tedious manual process, and corner rounding had to be done on a separate stationary routing station.
Junior director Matthias Keim, who is responsible for the furniture and interior finishing division, started looking for a new edgebanding machine and found what he was looking for with the "Tempora 800" model from Format4.
50 percent time savings
Matthias Keim says: "The problem with rework is a thing of the past. After we've installed the furniture at the customer's site, we just wipe over the edges once, and we save 50 percent of the time during edgebanding. It's touch and go; everyone can handle the machine. Furthermore, all options are open to us regarding PUR or solid wood edges."
