Video transcript
Hi, my name is Marius – I’m the engineering manager at TopHat Industries. I’m basically in charge of everything manufacturing, engineering, maintenance, and system integration engineering. TopHat is a modular homes company, which is pretty much building houses inside of a factory. It’s a bit of a revolution.
We’re making houses out of structural timber and also we’re using machinery in an automated/semi automated mode to prepare all those materials. TopHat intends to move into zero carbon homes from a traditional process where you need a lot of builders, a lot of machinery on site, and a lot of materials which creates lots of waste. Instead at TopHat we do all those things in a controlled environment.
When we started the concept of TopHat, obviously we started traditional, cutting everything by hand which created a lot of work. So at that point, the management decided we need to improve that into a semi automated system. We got the first Striebig saw in and that was a huge improvement because the quality and the capability and capacity improved a lot after that. You also needed less people to do a huge amount of boards.
The benefits of a semi-automated Striebig saw for a modular homes company
To have an automated factory helps a lot with improvement because you don’t look for that specific skill – you don’t look for the joiner skill a lot and you don’t look for side skills anymore. You look for people who know how to find the work instructions, how to read the work instructions and how to position some boards in place and unload them. The recruitment is way easier now.
If we compare it for building 2 modules a day, you would need around 8 people to cut the boards and prepare them, and you will need lots of hand tools, and the environment wouldn’t be great because you would need lots of extractions everywhere. When you use a machine instead, you would just need the one machine and 2 manufacturing operatives to do that.
The immediate benefits are the quality and the quantity of product being produced in the time. Then from an environmental point of view the extraction unit attached to our saw made a huge difference because you can just stay in a small chair next to the saw and you’re not going to get dusty, which would be a different story if you were to do it by hand.
Why TopHat bought a second Striebig Saw
When we bought the second Striebig fully automated saw, the first thing we classed was the capacity. The requirements for the modules were high at that point, so the capacity needed to increase and we maximised the capacity on the first driver.
We did a calculation where we had people on two shifts on the one machine only, and we found we could run like that for a while but we decided if we were to buy a new machine we would save £25,000 annually, based on the 10% bonus you need to give to the people for a second shift, and the additional people you have around the machine. So that’s why we bought the second Striebig.
Before having an automated Striebig saw our design capacity was limited because there were some things that you just could not design, like where the toning groove goes. So you would need to adjust the manual machine all the time to allow for an extra 2mm, which could create waste when there was operator error and they forgot to put that 2mm in. With the automatic saw you could adjust that from the system point of view, which made sure we eliminated those types of issues.
Before we bought the Striebig, our saw was the bottleneck of the factory because we needed to cut so many internal and external boards using one single machine. Now people don’t need to look for materials anymore, everything’s labeled, and everything comes into a designated area. Just by labelling and having the material and boards in the right place at the right time we reduced 36% of our waste.
Striebig’s Optimisation Software
This new Striebig software optimises the machine itself, so it will know if you cut this board for a meter, you can cut the waste of it again for 200mm and use it in a corner. This allowed us to start actually using all the waste of the boards, the last time I checked only about 20% is wasted in comparison to our previous 36%.
The new Striebig integrated really well with our other machinery, because it’s just a beautiful extension of our old saw. Together they are going to do the right quality, the right quantity, and get rid of the waste of the material.
Striebig Maintenance
We didn’t expect the Striebigs to have such easy maintenance, because when you think about machinery that does automatic work, you normally assume it will be hard to maintain. But with these Striebigs because the panels are so open you can just go in, clean it, hoover it, and grease it by yourself.
Our technicians are doing an amazing job and they’re doing their own preventative TPM. I must say, especially with the new Striebigs, we have never had any kind of mechanical issues or any mechanical failures with it. That was something I didn’t expect.
Why did TopHat pick Striebig?
We picked Striebig because it is a brand that you will see in other big companies like B&Q for example. If you walk in B&Q you will see a Striebig and they’re going to cut the boards for you. Normally you would try to link with the top of the industry, which is how we found this. We also needed a vertical saw, and we looked a lot on the market ad we found that this was the best for us, and it also matched our requirements from a cost perspective.
I would advise anyone who’s looking into buying one of these machines to check with any other manufacturer that’s using it, and talk to them about the quality of it. This is the bit that helped us a lot, because it’s just the beginning of the process and if you make a mistake here you’re going to find it right at the end of the process, so the reward is massive.
For us the quality of the boards and the accuracy is why we chose Striebig, and I think you’ll probably find them at the top of the list for those things.
TM Machinery Training
When you think of machinery you think of complexity and expect it to be really hard to learn. We had full training from the TM services and the guys knew exactly what to do after that. It was so much easier to cope with sliding in the boards and starting to cut the boards after the training.
You just need to follow the processes with different machinery, you’ll need to adjust them and do corrections. The machine is just a click and play thing so it’s very easy to be utilised.
Working with TM machinery meant a lot for myself, as they made maintenance very easy because they will schedule your annual service which includes everything that needs to be done to the machine. They support our in-house engineers and have the next day delivery spare parts every time we need them.
So for us the support from TM services was huge. It was one of the top of the list of equipment providers and they actually provided those services.
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For more information on the wide range of Striebig Vertical Panel Saws and Dust Extraction units available exclusively from TM Machinery please contact us today.
