Panel processing hits the fast lane: high-tech, high-production and low-labor lines highlight a tour of European woodworking factories.

AUTOMATION WAS KING on the recent Homag Group Tour of Technology.

Eight European woodworking companies opened their doors to U.S. visitors, demonstrating high-production lines that in some cases are years ahead of the technological norm.

Several of those lines are profiled on the following pages. They are organized by function, starting with panel sizing and ending with assembly. Some other interesting nuggets of information uncovered on the tour are included as well.

Nolte Mobel Demonstrates Big and Bigger Panel Sizing Options

The panel saw is the backbone of composite panel processing. Yet, it frequently operates off in the corner, on its own and unconnected to the rest of a plant's equipment.

At Nolte Mobel's wardrobe production line, the panel saw works directly in line with edgebanding and insertion of fittings. A high-speed Bargstedt feeder, using a vacuum infeed belt, loads panels into a Homag strip line edgebander. From there it transfers to an accumulator to rebuild a book. A Holzma panel saw then makes the cross cuts for final processing.

The saw uses a three-blade system, in which the main blade and the scoring blade cut from below the panels. A third blade is used to score the already edgebanded parts to prevent blowout from the main blade.

A worker offloads the cut panels by sliding parts from an air table to one of the four offload stations. The stations raise and lower as needed to allow more cut parts to slide directly on top.

The next machine in line is a Homag KF edgebander. Edgebanded parts are then milled and fittings installed before workers collect and package them in preparation for shipment.

Operating on a much larger scale is the panel saw line in Nolte's particleboard facility. The US $2.5 million behemoth has two saws, one making vertical cuts and one making horizontal. It cuts books of panels measuring up to 21 1/2 feet long and 8 1/2 feet wide into pieces as small as 12 inches square.

The line is three years old and was the first one that Holzma installed that has a double saw carriage. The first blade cuts halfway through the hook, while the second finishes the job.

The entire process is fully automated. Books of panels are conveyed from the stacking section to the saws. A waste chute after each saw drops offal to a conveyor below, which takes the waste to be ground and recycled into panels or burned to heat the plant. After the panels are cut, a turning device will orient them if necessary to make offloading easier.

An optimization program works off cutlists produced in the office and transferred by a local area network, reducing waste to about 3.5 percent. The saws are capable of cutting only partway across the panel, so parts of different sizes can be produced from the same row.

Automated Lines Versatile for Edge Processing

Bruynzeel's stock cabinet parts facility produces more than 100,000 parts per week. Manufacturing of these parts takes place on three lines. The newest is a Powerline from Homag.

Automatic edgebanding machines are almost as prevalent as panel processing itself. But several of the companies toured went beyond simple edgebanding and incorporated machining tasks like drilling and gluing.

The Powerline is the machine concept Homag introduced in 1997. It is a computer-controlled throughfeed processing line that can incorporate a variety of features at different stations.

At Bruynzeel, the line first shapes and edgebands two sides of the part. It then turns the part 90 degrees, and, if necessary, shapes and edgebands the other two sides. Finally, three stations drill, glue and dowel the part.

The automated stacking unit unloads parts, flipping or turning them as needed for assembly. It also offsets every ninth part in a bricking effect to stabilize the stack during transportation.

Several of the companies toured used a Powerline, but the specific features used by each varied. Meubar's line, for example, has an eight-tool profile chamber for softforming edges. Meubar can softform up to 60 meters per minute depending on the profile, compared to 100 meters per minute for straight edgebanding.

Automated Material Handling Makes for Hands-Off Machining

While the Powerlines bore the necessary holes on square parts, shapes require something different. Meubar N.V. machines curved furniture parts on a twin-table Homag BAZ Genius processing center.

Meubar's machining center is a no-operator system. One person monitors the machine area, but he does not work directly on the machine.

The Homag BAZ's two spindles share a 70-position tool changer on the back of the machine. One spindle can machine a part while the other changes tools, or both can machine parts simultaneously.

A Ligmatech 2PS 50 vacuum lift eliminates the need for human labor by loading and positioning parts on the tables. The Ligmatech also unloads and stacks the finished parts.

Tivapan N.V. uses a Weeke BST 440/D and 440/E for horizontal drilling and dowel inserting. The drilling is separated from Tivapan's edgebanding line because drilling is a slower process, and the company does not want to slow the edgebanding.

A Bargstedt feeder inserts parts into the Weeke machine. The first unit bores up to eight holes below and four above. The second unit bores up to four holes and also inserts dowels.

For routing and edgebanding curved parts, Tivapan uses a Homag BAZ 20 machining center.

Cabinet Door Line Profiles and Foils in One Step

Homag adapted the idea of panel processing to door manufacturing when it engineered Nolte Mobel's DM 5.5 million (US $2.6 million) door line.

Panels go on the line with no gap between them. First, a Homag machine drills while a second machine contours the edges. Nolte only offers one door contour, so the only time a tooling change is required is when the tool wears out.

The next machine has three tools for sanding the contoured edges. Two tools function simultaneously, and the third only comes in as a replacement if a sanding belt should break.

The doors travel through a heating zone in preparation for the foil application. A rotating head above the line supplies the 60-80 gram foils in a wide variety of colors. The head automatically switches over as a new color is run; the average run for a given color is 300 pieces.

The foil is wider than the doors are, so when the door emerges from the Friz direct laminator, enough foil hangs over to cover the edges. Before wrapping, however, the edges need to be prepared.

A machine coats the edges of the particleboard with hotmelt to fill any holes. It then scrapes off the excess, and applies another hotmelt before wrapping the foil around. After a bit of cooling time, the foil bottom is trimmed and the door is turned 90 degrees.

The next machine is monikered the "one-and-a-half-side" machine, because it trims both the top and bottom to the proper size but only edgebands one side. A Bargstedt conveyor transports the door to another single-sided edgebander for the other side. The reason for this is to increase processing speed, because the line doesn't need to be stopped to change over to doors of varying length.

Carousel Cuts Labor in Cabinet Assembly

At Bruynzeel, a single-operator Ligmatech assembly line for cabinet uppers assembles 800 to 900 cabinets per day. The line automatically loads the cabinet gables onto the conveyor and reads their bar codes. The first machine in the line inserts hinge plates and mounting brackets, and the second preglues the construction holes.

The machine that dominates the landscape, however, is the three-station assembly carousel. At the first station, a robotic arm loads the gables into place. The carousel rotates to the next station, where a worker places the cabinet top and bottom, and then positions the back. At the third station, a robotic arm staples the unit together. The carousel rotates once more, placing the assembled cabinet back on the line and then picking up two more gables to begin again.

A Ligmatech VKA20 unloads the cabinets, and hand labor is used to mount shelves and package the cabinet, Cabinets can be shipped in less than half a day.

Stops on the tour:

Shop Name                 Location             Product

Tivapan N.V.          Izegem, Belgium    Laminated furniture
                                                parts

Decospan France         Hazebrouck,       Veneered and solid
                           France           wood furniture
                                          parts and flooring

Berryfloor             Menen, Belgium      Laminate, solid
                                               wood and
                                         engineered flooring

Bruynzeel             Bergen op Zoom,        Residential
                      The Netherlands          cabinets

Robbrechts N.V.      Turnhout, Belgium     Office furniture

Meubar N.V.          Aartrijke, Belgium      Residential
                                              furniture

Diapal Keukens N.V.   Jabbeke, Belgium   Residential cabinets

Nolte Mobel GmbH       Germerscheim,         Residential
                          Germany             furniture

* The tour also visited the production plants for Holzma, I.S.E. and
Homag.

RELATED ARTICLE: 9 Days, 5 Countries, 11 Factories (and Scenery to boot!)

The Homag Group Tour of Technology took place on Sept. 21-30, 2001, and visited Belgium, France, The Netherlands, Luxembourg and Germany. Fifteen people from 10 U.S. furniture, cabinet and component companies attended the tour, in addition to seven representatives of Homag, Holzma, Weeke and Stiles Machinery. That number was far below the 35 who originally signed up, due to the tour taking place so shortly after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

For information on future Homag tours, contact Lorraine Bush, administrator, corporate events, at [phone] ext. 223.

It Splices, it Dices

Most of the companies visited on the tour ran high-volume, highly-automated lines with price tags running into the millions of dollars. Thus, it was somewhat surprising that one of the pieces of equipment that got the most response from tour participants was a $650 hand-held veneer splicer. The splicer, made by Kuper, was in use at Decospan France. It looks a bit like a common packaging tape dispenser and works like it as well. The user rolls it along the joint of the two pieces of veneer and it lays down a zig-zag glue line, joining the pieces together.

Training For the Future

The tours of both Holzma's and Homag's manufacturing facilities included a look at the companies' apprenticeship programs. Most of the apprentices begin the three-year program at age 15. Apprentices continue taking classes but also learn at the plant, beginning with the basic principles and moving up to working in each of the plant's departments. At Holzma, for example, the tour group watched an apprentice working on a model of a material handling system that identified disks of different materials and put them on the proper conveyor.

The apprenticeship program helps to ensure well-trained staff. It also lets the apprentice find the department in which he or she is best suited for working.

Attendee's Perspective:

Office furniture maker Helikon Furniture Co. of Taftville, CT, sent two representatives on the tour: Director of Operations Chris Paulhus and Millroom Leadman John McQueen.

"We were interested in seeing how European companies were laid out and structured," Paulhus says. "Although the companies were much larger than us, you can often get some ideas just by walking around."

Both Paulhus and McQueen listed Decospan France as their favorite tour stop. Like Helikon, Decospan does a lot of veneer lay-up and pressing. "It's great to see the massive machines, but when you put one company up to what we do, it's that one," says McQueen. Decospan's veneer pressing line consists of an automatic glue spreader, human labor to position veneer sheets, a Friz press and Bargstedt conveyors.

Material handling devices also impressed the Helikon duo. Paulhus says the vacuum lifts used by many of the factories, even hand-operated models, could greatly reduce labor.

"We have pretty much the same employee issues as they do [in Europe]," Paulhus says. "In Connecticut we have the further problem of two casinos nearby that employ 16,000 to 17,000 people and utilize pretty much all of the entry-level labor."

While the tour stops gave an opportunity to see new systems up close, Paulhus says talking to other tour participants gave him ideas as well. "Even though we do different end products, everyone has to deal with some standard employee issues."

The 1-Inch Edge

Decospan runs a feed-through machine that applies a solid wood edge, about 40mm thick, to a panel. It operates much like an edgebander, although the approach angle for the edge is naturally much narrower. Because of this, the distance between the glue and the pressure is relatively large. A hot air blower ensures that the glue remains a liquid until the edge and the panel adhere.

Bruynzeel's Storied Past

While Bruynzeel is now the largest kitchen maker in the Benelux countries, the century-old company has reinvented itself numerous times since its inception.

Bruynzeel began making kitchens just before World War II. But in the 1960s and 70s, it shifted to tall cabinets for bedroom storage, boosted by a Dutch law requiring new homes to have at least one cabinet in each bedroom. The company also became global in the 1960s, but financial problems about 20 years ago forced it to split up. Former Bruynzeel companies include a door manufacturer in Amsterdam and a colored pencil maker in South Africa.