Smart Garden Offices, based near Ipswich, decided to investigate Italian and Germany machinery to boost capacity after business expanded.
"As more and more people are now being able to work from home rather than have to commute long distances to their workplace, we have received a significant increase in both enquiries and orders for our garden offices, so our lead times were increasing," said Charlie Dalton, the company’s managing director.
Mr Dalton said he had no previous experience of CNC technology and believed a CNC machining centre would not only assist in machining capacity but also provide greater accuracy in assembling component parts.
An SCM CNC Tech Z2 machining centre was selected, featuring a 5200mm-long table to accommodate the company’s longest component at 4.8m. An 11kW electrospindle runs at up to 24,000rpm and is fitted with a Vector Axis with Penta digital control to provide automatic rotation at 360degrees in the X-Y directions when angular heads are fitted.
Tooling is supplied by either an R8 rapid toolchanger with eight tooling positions or a TR10 automatic toolchanger with a capacity of 10 tools or machining heads. An F18 boring head with inverter and with 12 vertical and six horizontal independent spindles, plus an integrated sawblade for grooving completes the specification.
"A quarto base rail that previously took 40-50 minutes to machine now takes only 10 minutes, so a majority of work is now going on the CNC, including wall panels that are machined very fast," said Mr Dalton.
