Stuga had a busy show and enjoyed the general buzz around the halls and the industry in general but in particular enjoyed the many enquiries for sawing & machining centers. The company feels positive that many of the enquiries were serious, demonstrating a general wish within the industry to invest.
Stuga staff only able to demonstrate a tooling module from one of its current range of machines due to not being able to obtain a larger stand but that will change in 2017 at the NEC.
Stuga has enjoyed considerable success with the flagship ZX4 sawing & machining center over the last three years and the interest continued at the show with a significant number of enquiries for this high output model which is capable of producing between 800 and 1,000 windows per week. The ZX4 is now up to the MK5 version and is proving very popular with many large fabricators throughout the UK, Scotland and the Republic of Ireland. Recent installations have included two machines at Polyframe, Halifax and another at Ford Windows in Sheffield.
Fabricators enjoy working with the Stuga ZX4 for many reasons but in particular easy operation and simple maintenance features are often mentioned as well as speed and accuracy. Stuga is frequently chosen as the supplier because they are both the manufacturer and British based meaning the staff and technicians only specialise in their own sawing and machining centers. This creates a real sense of top class back-up knowledge and help when things go wrong, which they always will. Stuga either build or purchase almost every single part in the UK so everything is readily available and obsolescence is always engineered out at the earliest opportunity. In the unlikely event that a customer was not satisfied with their Stuga product they could simply arrange to drive to the company where they would find friendly staff who speak the same language. Stuga does however find that a chat by phone normally sorts out most problems quickly and easily.
The Stuga sawing & machining centers such as the ZX4 utilise Microsoft Windows front end software and the very latest leading edge Beckhoff control systems. This allows for features such as tool breakage indication, profile recognition, offcut/profile measuring and more. Offcuts are a nuisance to all fabricators and Stuga go to a lot of trouble to ensure the absolute minimum wastage and maximum optimization in order help reduce profile useage. Each sawing & machining center is supplied with internet enabled on-board cameras for fast and easy fault finding. These can also be set to record events that may occur when Stuga is closed and the videos can then be viewed when the service centre opens.
Stuga automatic sawing and machining centers have been in production now for over sixteen years with each one still fully operational as Stuga take good care of their customers and their Stuga machines. Over one hundred and sixty of these machines are in production at uPVC window and door fabricators with many adding second, third and fourth installations over the years.
Whilst enjoying tremendous interest at the Fit Show 2016 Stuga now hope that hard work will convert as many leads as possible into sales over the coming weeks and months. The company is also already planning for the Fit Show 2017.