Millennium Door Systems, Birmingham

Specialist bespoke fire door manufacturer, Millennium Door Systems, has added a second Striebig Control vertical panel saw to spearhead a boost in production.

Both saws are the 6224 version, the largest in the Control range, which cuts panels up to 5300mm in length. They are used to cut bought-in door blanks to size before lipping and to cut pre-veneered boards at the company’s purpose-built factory in Birmingham.

Boost in production with second Striebig saw

The latest Control features four-sided trimming. This push-button facility allows the bottom trim cut to be carried out automatically without the panel having to be lifted or turned once it has been placed on the bed.

Both saws, supplied by Striebig‘s sole UK agent, T.M. Machinery Sales, are equipped with a scribing blade to prevent break-out when cutting the pre-veneered boards.

The Control, which has an accuracy of 1/10 mm, represents the cutting edge in vertical panel saw technology. It delivers a perfectly square cut every time, doing away with the need to manually sand and trim edges after cutting.

The saw’s sophisticated design allows it to be operated via an ergonomic control panel, leaving time for the next batch of work to be prepared. Much of the cutting operation is automated; the saw head is power fed, and the feed speed is controlled to ensure the quality of the cut is maintained.

Numerous automatic procedures carried out by the press of a button include locking and releasing the saw beam, setting the horizontal cutting height, plunging and swivelling the motor, locking the support rollers during sawing and fine saw blade adjustment.

Millennium Door Systems is the manufacturing arm of the Midland Building Products (MBP) Group. The solid chipboard core and solid timber special size fire doors it produces are sold on by group companies, chiefly for office and warehouse use.

Its 44mm thick doors are fire rated to FD30 (30 minutes) and 54mm thick versions to FD60 (60 minutes). They are produced in sizes from 250 to 1,300mm wide, in heights of up to 3m, and can have a veneer, plywood or paint finish.

The first Striebig, bought in 2004 to replace a flatbed table saw, led to an immediate increase in production.

Millennium Door Systems’ production director Jim Manning said he talked to a lot of people in the industry before buying the first Control. “The message came back that Striebig offered the best saw there was. Although there are cheaper alternatives it was well worth paying the extra as it’s still cutting as accurately today as it was five years ago.

“The new saw has allowed us to increase production to around 150 doors a day. The alternative would have been to have put on a second shift, with all the complications that would entail.”

Millennium Door Systems believes in introducing as much mechanisation as possible, so a vacuum lift device is used with each saw which removes manual handling of door blanks when loading and unloading.

“The saws are an absolutely crucial part of our operations,” said Jim Manning. “They are very robustly made and contain tough drives which cope well with the volume of heavy doors they have to handle. As well as delivering a totally accurate and clean cut, which was not the case with our table saw, they take up minimal space in the factory.”