Window Fabricator Installs Automatic Machining Line

Southampton, UK - Aluminium window and door fabricator Joedan Manufacturing has installed an automatic machining and sawing line from FOM, Italy, with capacity to increase production output at the Tewkesbury factory from 300 to 1,000 units per week. The planned increase in new business will come from growth within the sector coupled with winning contracts from smaller fabricators. The latter will find it increasingly difficult to compete using manual and semi-automatic machinery against a background of ever more stringent regulations governing the design and manufacture of new windows and doors.

Supplied through KASTO, Southampton, FOM's UK sales and service agent, the line and associated rearrangement of the shop floor represented an investment by Joedan of £250,000. It is the third generation of production plant that the company has used in its 21-year history. The first was a sequence of manual routing, milling, drilling and sawing machines, which was slow and required extensive marking-out of the profile by hand; while the second generation involved automatic double miter saws and a stand-alone machining center to complete the remaining operations in one further operation.

Now that all machining is included in the FOM line, higher production output can be achieved in a given factory area without increasing operational overheads, advised Joedan's managing director, Kelvin Ashby. Moreover, the current single-shift working can be supplemented as required to include a 6.00 pm to 10.00 pm twilight shift with minimum extra labor cost.

Accuracy of machining is also better, all features now being within 0.2 mm of nominal size, and repeatability from batch to batch is exemplary. The other significant benefit of one-hit production is a reduction in the potential for handling damage, as there is no need for part-finished, pre-painted material to be wheeled around on trolleys.

Joedan manufactures its products using aluminium profiles from group company, Architectonics Systems, and from Sapa Building Systems. It consequently uses two window processing software packages, both of which link into the FOM control software. Approximately 30 percent of output goes to Joedan's local retail outlets, the remainder being supplied to the trade nationwide, principally for use in new domestic houses, apartment blocks, schools and light commercial buildings.

Windows and doors are always bespoke, manufactured to customer requirements that come in by fax or e-mail and are entered into the firm's host computer. Jobs are scheduled down to the production line, where the programming software recognizes the type of product. On entry of overall window or door dimensions, the control works out automatically the number of individual parts needed, their length, angle of cut and machined features required.

The appropriate extrusion is loaded by hand in lengths of up to 6.8 meters onto the input table. A gripper on a powered carriage external to the machining area holds one end of the extrusion and effects longitudinal (X-axis) motion of the material under CNC while it is undergoing machining and subsequent sawing. The twelve 2-axis milling / drilling tools arranged around all four sides of the profile in the machining center module, and the adjacent circular blade in the sawing module, all have cross and/or infeed movement but no X-axis travel.

After machining is complete, which includes a choice of mitre cut from -20 degrees through right angles to +20 degrees, each set of components is transferred to the output table and from there to the fabrication area for completion of the widow or door frames.

The FOM line at Tewkesbury, which was installed in September 2006, is one of the most advanced operating anywhere in the world and is the only example of such a line in the UK making aluminium, as opposed to PVCu, windows and doors. Joedan's chairman and founder, John Purcaro, who was the driving force behind the investment, prefers to manufacture aluminium products for a number of reasons. He considers them to be of higher specification than PVCu, stronger and more durable, more aesthetically pleasing and less susceptible to movement under extremes of temperature.

His group's relationship with FOM goes back to mid 2005, when Architectonics Systems bought the Italian manufacturer's polyamide rolling machines, which insert a thermal barrier between two aluminium extrusions. Excellent support over the past 18 months persuaded the company to go back to FOM for the machining and cutting line, the installation of which, complete with teleservice link to Italy, has been an unqualified success, according to Mr Ashby.

SOURCE: Joedan Manufacturing and KASTO Ltd.