Direct Trade purchase fourth Stuga Sawing & Machining Centre
Direct Trade (Yorkshire) Ltd have recently invested in a Stuga ZX3 sawing & machining centre for their new door manufacturing factory in Doncaster. Well aware of the benefits of Stuga sawing and machining from their window factory, volumes of doors soon signalled that the efficiencies from automation could generate additional capacity and the order was quickly negotiated.
Several Stuga customers have three sawing & machining centres but this is the first Stuga customer to have four. It is a known fact that some fabricators have had to purchase a second sawing & machining centre fairly soon after the first because the first machine didn’t give the output promised but with Direct Trade it has been a case of steady growth within the company that has created the purchases of more Stuga machines. The first machine was the original Stuga Flowline in 2003 with a capacity of around 550 windows per week. This was followed by a ZX3 in 2006 with a capacity of 650 to 700 windows per week and another on in 2009 with the same capacity. With the current pattern of investment in Stuga’s around every three years Stuga will be hoping for the success of this major player to continue.
Stuga guarantee the output of their sawing & machining centres so the purchaser has the comfort of knowing what he will get. In doing this the product mix, level and type of preps required and window styles are all taken into the calculations to come up with an accurate figure. Direct Trade plan their business very carefully realising that running automatic equipment flat out creates greater risk of breakdowns and leave no time for proper care and maintenance, so machines are rarely run to full capacity and extra capacity is purchased in good time. All their Stuga machines are covered by Service Contracts that guarantee regular servicing on a scheduled basis by Stuga as well as proper in-house maintenance by trained staff. Investment even in tough times is what sets companies like Direct Trade aside from many other fabricators that sweat their assets to the limit and bear the inevitable inefficient consequences.
Direct Trade fabricate the System 10 and Rustique profile systems and find the Stuga rotary tooling system extremely versatile when it comes to programming every detail that is required to obtain the optimum performance versus flexibility. With preps being possible anywhere within three hundred and sixty degrees around any profile it really is possible to get much greater versatility than with a limited number of fixed heads. This is the reason that more and more competitors are copying this idea pioneered by Stuga for British windows.
Another key to the performance of Stuga sawing & machining centres is the buffer station that is lateral to the sawing and machining functions. The Stuga ZX3 and ZX4 machines have this lateral buffer station creating a situation where there is rarely any conflict between sawing and machining, so no hold ups with one function waiting for the other. Inline buffer stations cannot create this flexibility which is the primary cause of limiting their output.
Stuga back-up their machines with a service centre and six geographically based technicians. Software is all written in-house and parts are all resourced in this country for faster availability.