Elite Office Furniture UK has expanded rapidly since the company was established in 1986. Having outgrown its original Howden-based premises after just two years of trading, the business moved to a much larger production site in Goole, East Yorkshire.
To help satisfy ever rising demand for the company’s range of office furniture over the past three decades, the Goole site has undergone several major expansions.
Now a multi-million-Pound business employing 150 people, Elite Office Furniture has recently relocated to a new £15 million, 225,000ft² headquarters. In addition to housing the company’s admin functions and showroom facilities, the building provides a generous 152,000ft² of manufacturing space.
The new production facility is part of a significant investment program that includes the procurement of a range of highly efficient production systems. These purchases will allow the company to streamline its manufacturing methods, reduce production flows, substantially increase its output and also assist in achieving its ambitious growth targets.
Central to Elite’s manufacturing investments was the purchase of a highly efficient 2D Platino Fiber Evo, laser cutting machine from Prima Power UK. Production director, Rob Clarke explains: “Our policy of making continuous investments in state-of-the-art production machinery has resulted in Elite now being able to produce 90% of all of our required components in-house. This high level of autonomy allows great flexibility and helps us to provide the best possible standards of product quality and service.
“Our move to new premises with a much larger custom designed production facility, and the purchase of further advanced plant, will allow us to complete even faster order to delivery times and to achieve further major manufacturing efficiencies. Vital to succeeding in our aims was the purchase of a fast laser cutting machine that was able to produce high volumes of the kind of premium quality, accurate cut parts required for many of our products.
“We decided that the Prima Power 2D Platino Fiber Evo was the ideal machine for our needs. A demonstration proved that the machine was easy to program, simple to operate and straightforward to integrate in to our production system. Also, we were satisfied that the Prima Power 2D Platino Fiber Evo was capable of producing high volumes of premium quality laser cut parts. In addition to having confidence that the machine could meet our demanding production volumes and product quality requirements, we were also aware of the excellent reputation of Prima Power machines and the service provided by the company.”
Flexible production choices
The 2D Platino Fiber Evo laser machine was developed by Prima Power to maximise its customers’ competitiveness. The flexible machine is provided with a series of optional suites, each dedicated to different production needs.
Smart Cut, allows the rapid cutting of thin sheets of up to 5mm and delivers reductions in cycle times of up to 30%. For the fast laser cutting of medium to high thickness sheets, Max Cut, enables reductions in processing times up to 40%, whilst Night Cut – intended for use in intensive production situations – provides higher piercing and cutting process safety. These suites add further value to a flexible, reliable and high performing fibre laser system that is based on a tried and tested platform with over 2,000 installations across the globe.
The Platino Fiber Evo is equipped with a new cutting head with an adaptive collimator, single focus lens and is suitable for all production needs. In addition to high brilliance, the energy efficient fibre laser provides over 30% wall-plug efficiency. The system has low maintenance and reduced consumables needs and is supplied with 2, 3, 4, or as specified by Elite Office Furniture, 6kW of power.
Focusing features
The Prima Power fibre laser cutting head has adaptive optics for automatic focus position and diameter control. Thanks to a quick, reactive and precise stand-off measurement, the head ensures excellent quality and provides dynamic cutting of all materials; it can also be used with maximum cutting pressures in the most challenging of environments. SIPS (Safe Impact Protection System) protects the fibre laser head in the event of a crash and a wide range of nozzles suitable for all applications, together with an automatic nozzle changing system, are available on request.
The 2D Platino Fiber Evo features easy to use and efficient CNC software, whilst Maestro -Libellula and NC Express e3 CAD/CAM systems allow simple and fast offline programming.
The machines’ new cabins are available in two versions – the Lean option is compact, quicker to install and more economical, whilst the Open cabin version has greater accessibility and visibility of the work area, which allows front, lateral and roof opening.
A wide range of modules for the automation of raw and processed sheets flow means that Platino Fiber Evo machines are able to be delivered to exactly match the processing needs of each individual customer. Available systems cover automatic loading and unloading, to automatic storage, and from the automatic selection and stacking of finished parts, to the seamless integration into flexible manufacturing systems (FMS’). Also, as a user’s production needs may vary over time, modules can be retrofitted that allow the machines to adapt to all new situations.
Rob Clarke concludes: “Our new building has impressive environmentally friendly features including energy efficient glazing, a biomass heating system and motion activated LED lighting throughout. In addition to meeting our challenging production volume and product quality criteria, it helped that the Prima Power 2D Platino Fiber Evo also met our environmental standards as it has very low power consumption needs and minimal consumable requirements.”
Prima Power www.primapower.com
