AMBIC EXPANSION CONTINUES WITH SCM GROUP MACHINERY
"Recession. What recession?" comments Ambic's Owner and Managing Director, David Potter, surveying his new manufacturing facility of 24,000 square feet near Chester-le-Street, County Durham. "We managed a 30% growth in our business in 2009, and that's despite moving our entire operation and installing several new machines to further increase our production capacity."
David Potter formed Ambic 26 years ago. He had previously been an engineer before venturing into the school, college, storage and contract furniture markets. "We see ourselves as precision engineers, manufacturing very high quality products to meet our variety of customer's requirements. If they want a special unit or with different dimensions to the standard sizes, we will make it for them," continued David Potter. In exceptional circumstance and to help those customers in dire need it has been known to make miracles happen as Mr Potter explained "If a customer orders at 8.00 o'clock in the morning and wants the order completed immediately, we can design, manufacture, assemble and deliver by early afternoon the same day."
Ambic boast over 700 standard products and supply the majority of these within the local North East Region. As Ambic contacts and customers move further afield in their careers within schools, universities, colleges, libraries, local authorities, etc., when they require additional furniture, they always contact Ambic again. The web of Ambic content clients continues to grow with customers spread from Scotland to London and Devon.
With tongue in cheek, David Potter continues "We used to say, if they don't speak Geordie, they don't get our furniture" but goes on to say ""We actually want to supply more of our furniture around the UK as we now have the production capacity following our recent investment and we want to continue our growth year on year. We now have plenty of free space surrounding our new factory to extend and expand into when the time comes."
Installation of new machinery is most evident within the panel processing section of the factory where a new CNC machine is being installed. The purpose-built 24,000 sq ft manufacturing facility caters for all of their furniture-manufacturing needs including steel fabrication, welding, powder coating, spraying, cabinet assembly, solid surfacing, and tube bending facilities.
Alongside two existing Morbidelli CNC Machining Centres, a new Morbidelli Universal TV 3615 CNC machine has been installed, plus a Gabbiani Beam Saw model Galaxy 105, an IDM Single-Sided Automatic Edge Bander model LEVEL KS-R2(58), and a Sergiani Hot Platen press model GS-8 / 160-35-13.
The Morbidelli Universal has a high specification to meet Ambic's ever more demanding needs and has a 12HP Routing Head running up to 24,000rpm, an 18-spindle Drilling Unit with 12 vertical and 6 horizontal spindles and a Sawblade Unit for grooving. The 3600 x 1500mm TV work table has 8 bars and was supplied with a variety of vacuum cups, plus lifting bars to assist in panel loading and unloading.
"I purchased my first Morbidelli nine years ago without even seeing one in operation" states David Potter. "Then another one followed a couple of years later and again I had no reason to change supplier this time for our third machine as they have given me excellent service with very few machine service interventions required."
The Gabbiani Galaxy 105 has a 3200 x 3200mm capacity and with a 105mm cutting height, a 15HP main sawblade unit, scoring saw with a Postform cutting facility. The double saw carriage includes optimised blade and pressure beam strokes complete with a self-learning system.
Rapid unlocking of the main and scoring saw blades is a standard feature and Ottimo Perfect Cut Top panel optimising system is proving to be a great saving in material costs.
A variety of edge bandings are offered on Ambic's furniture from tape to 3mm ABS and therefore a new edge bander had to be specified to accommodate all of the various edge materials and, at the same time, be easy to set up and operate between jobs.
Therefore, an IDM Single-Sided Edge Bander, model LEVEL KS-R2 was purchased, that includes a PC Control System for the fast, easy and precise handling of the main functions of the machine with an infinite number of working programs.
At the in-feed of the IDM, a Pre-Milling Unit with 2.2KW motors is installed for the perfect finishing of the panel edge to eliminate any imperfections and provide an excellent edge for the following hot melt gluing process.
Operational Trimming Units include a K/SEL End Trimming Unit, a Top and Bottom Edge Trimming Unit, an SK2 Corner Rounding and Trimming Unit, Glue Scraper Unit and an SPN Buffing Unit with pneumatic oscillation followed by a Brightening Unit for final edge finishing on 3mm edging materials.
To complete the major investment with the SCM Group in the panel processing area, a Sergiani Hot Platen Press for pressing laminates on to various substrates was recently installed with platen dimensions of 3500 x 1300mm.
Heating of the platens is by an in-built electric oil heating system, the oil pumped through solid steel platens that are designed to provide a perfect and uniform distribution of the heat over the full platen area. All controls are computerised to allow pressing times, working temperature and pressure, exclusion of a pair of cylinders when pressing short panels, adjustable opening stroke and a special timer to switch the heating boiler on before commencement of work in the morning.
Ambic's Marketing Manager, Jonathan Taylor, is very enthusiastic about their move to larger premises and the capital investment recently made. "We can offer all our customers exactly what they want and when they want it" he commented, "Our engineering quality and construction techniques are unrivalled, and we believe our level of service, including assembly, delivery and installation ensures our customers continually return to Ambic to fulfil their ongoing requirements."
SCM Group UK, based in Nottingham, have worked closely with the production staff of Ambic, including the integration of a full Management, Design and Machine Programming software package from Space 3D.
David Potter concludes "We are very pleased with all the new machines supplied by the SCM Group. Installation and commissioning went very well and a full training programme was undertaken to ensure our operatives were producing as quickly as possible. We believe in working very closely with our suppliers and we have the assurance that SCM is on the end of the line should we ever need them including Telesolve links from the machines direct to SCM's help desks."
Contacts:-
Ambic Limited - Tel. 0191 3891888 Fax 0191 3891999 http://www.ambic.ltd.uk/
Email enquiries@ambic.ltd.uk
SCM Group (UK) Ltd, Blenheim House, Camberley Road, Bulwell, Nottingham NG6 8UW. Tel: 0115 9770044 Fax: 0115 9770946 http://www.scmgb.co.uk/
