TruFrame has commissioned its fourth and final BDM cutting and machining centre, part of a £3.2 million investment programme which has been carried out over the last 18 months.
The quartet of new cutting and machining centres are said to provide a far greater level of accuracy, consistency and production throughput than the machines they replace, and have been tailored to suit TruFrame’s specific requirements.
According to TruFrame, the bespoke features include the ability to process profiles as short as 195mm, taking the requirement to separately process short profiles from 13 per shift to just one every other shift – while diamond-tipped saw blades are designed to ensure that cut quality is as reliable as possible whilst dramatically reducing the frequency of blade changes.
The 8-axis machines also benefit from servo-driven motors and a magnetic linear drive system – capable of moving at 15 metres per second – and have been designed to allow a whole-machine tolerance of no greater than +/- 0.2mm.
TruFrame says the additional capacity provided by the new cutting and machining centres puts it in the position of being able to comfortably manufacture 4,000 frames (a record number achieved in 2017) on a standard 40-hour week, using two fully-staffed production shifts and existing ‘top-up’ night shift. Further additional capacity is already planned via the future development of the night shift, with aspirations to produce as many as 5,000 frames from their current site.
Patrick Firmager, projects director of TruFrame, commented: “Every piece of profile that goes into our windows and doors is now processed by one of our new BDM cutting and machining centres. Our implementation of best-in-class machinery and technology, combined with our unique hand-finishing process, ensures that our product quality and consistency is the finest you’ll see anywhere in the industry.
“I believe that customers appreciate our levels of service, support and our ability to offer new marketing innovations such as QuoteBuilder, but the inherent improvement in product quality following our investment adds further tangible evidence of TruFrame’s commitment to being the trade frame supplier of choice to our installer and supply-only partners.”
