Jeld Wen

The client was immersed in a modernization process in their Penrith facilities in order to increase the production capacity. According to Andrew Taylor, Product Manager at JeldWen, “Penrith consisted of 3 assembly lines, all 30 years plus. They were prone to breakdowns, obsolete equipment, and low output. The decision was made to replace two of these lines consisting of the integrated frame making machine, core insertion, hot press and finally a camera system”.

The main challenge lied in the fact that in Penrith facilities there was limited space and two existing production lines had to be replaced while maintaining production.

The project included two turn-key manufacturing lines for residential doors consisted in integrated frame making machines, core insertions, 4 hot presses and camera systems.

The stiles, rails and skins are fed and placed automatically using a pick and place system in a hot melt glue system, so that afterwards, the door frame is then automatically constructed. Then, the frame is presented to the skin, the honeycomb core is manually inserted and the top skin is then placed on top of it. This door is then presented to a pre-crush press, and this is done to mutually deform the core with the panels and the skin.

These doors are then stacked into groups of ten and they are then presented to a ten daylight hot-press which is steam-heated to 100ºC. After the pressing process, the doors are then released and then fed individually into the finishing lines, so that doors are trimmed to size.

The doors then carry on to another Biele system, which is a camera & vision system that looks for imperfections, small damages, scratches… This data is then transferred to an end-of-line stacker, and this stacks the doors for going to dispatch or stacks in a different stack for going to the repair area.

The customized vision system implemented on these lines were specifically developed for this project. This cutting-edge technology integrates in a small form factor vision system (only 750 mm wide) 14 cameras to detect up to 40 different type of defects in all six sides of the doors (knot holes, resin pockets, skin delaminating, split timber, glue on face, water marks, trim damage, poor trim, loose lip, open joint, face decolouration…).

Thanks to the new door production lines, the client achieved a significant increase in their production capacity. In Andrew Taylor’s words, “the old assembly lines at best could produce 3 doors per minute and were of a cellular system. The new lines are now completely integrated, and they produce 5 doors per minute”.

He also admits that “some time after the commissioning, once we had gained experience working with these new lines, we implemented some little improvements thanks to the engineering from Biele and ourselves, and we are now able to achieve 5.5 doors per minute. This is giving 45,000 doors per week on a 24/5 weekly system”.