For decades, Gopak has been furnishing business premises, classrooms, canteens, libraries, community centres and other spaces with tables, benches and chairs, made by the skilled manufacturing team at its Kent facility. The firm also makes Enviro tables and benches under licence and in recent years, this range has become increasingly popular with early learning establishments and primary schools. The appeal of this furniture, which comprises an unwelded aluminium frame and a corrugated core board with a laminated surface, lies in its high load bearing capacity and intricate shape options - daisies, keyholes, triangles and kidney shapes are all possible. 

“In younger years education there is increasing emphasis on enhancing the learning experience through the environment. The Enviro range is ideal for this, as it offers scope for creating fun, appealing schemes with different themes, shapes and colours. In this context, the Enviro range is contributing an ever-increasing percentage of Gopak’s overall sales, so it was essential that we invested in this area to future-proof growth,” explains Gopak’s operations director, Damien Hickie. 

Edgebanding is the most challenging aspect of manufacturing this type of furniture; a straight line edgebander cannot follow the contours, therefore a shaped edgebander is required. Up until that point, Gopak was relying on a 12-year old machine, but rework had reached an unacceptably high level. 

“The quality of the joins was letting us down. We were having to remove and reapply one in every 20 edgebands because the closure wasn’t correct, which was costing us time and money,” explains Damien.

“Blown away” by Biesse
Gopak visited the W Show at the NEC and admits to being “blown away” by the Rover A Edge on Biesse’s booth. The machine was equipped with Ray Force technology - a cutting-edge solution that uses infrared technology to apply shaped edges on panels without glue. 

“We were blown away by what we saw. A Biesse representative explained the Ray Force system and we could see that this was a company at the forefront of machining technology. That got us thinking,” recalls Damien. 

Gopak obtained two quotes for comparison and asked both companies to provide samples. 

“On some tables, we apply a 32mm edgeband on a 90 degree corner. The other company struggled to get a good finish on this - the samples they provided weren’t really acceptable, whereas the boards we sent to Biesse came back perfect,” says Damien. 

Gopak was also impressed with the way in which the Biesse sales team handled the quotation.

“Usually, machine suppliers give you a price for everything you need plus everything you don’t and you have to wait ages for the actual quotation. Biesse’s sales team came to our site and we discussed what was required and which options were valuable. They didn’t try and oversell or ‘over-spec’; they recommended a three-axis rather than a five-axis spindle, for example. They ‘built’ the machine specification during the meeting and supplied a quote there and then. That was an important selling point,” says Damien. 

This discussion steered Gopak towards a Rover A Edge 1632 edgebanding CNC centre, which is capable of producing shaped, edgebanded panels on a single machine. Ray Force was pre-enabled on the machine so that Gopak has the option of adding this system at a later date. Gopak also opted for Biesse’s EPS (Electronic Positioning System) on the pod & rail machine, which provided a significant step up in efficiency versus the manual pod placement that was necessary with its incumbent CNC.