Stuga at FIT SHOW 2016

Stuga Machinery Group is a British manufacturer of sawing and machining centers for manufacturing uPVC window and door frames dealing directly with the market place.  

Stuga design philosophy utilises innovation to simplify problems together with the latest technology where it is beneficial. This philosophy includes making potentially complex machining systems intuitively easy to use thereby reducing operator skills and subsequent potential errors.

Stuga as a brand has been designed and built in Gt Yarmouth, Norfolk, since 1986 and there are numerous Stuga automatic machines operating mainly throughout the United Kingdom and Ireland but also worldwide. As well as designing and producing machinery Stuga also has a totally integrated support facility at its HQ with state of the art facilities to look after Stuga customers and equipment by phone or internet as well as supply service, technical back-up and spare parts. This is backed up with technicians geographically based throughout the country. The Service Center is also geared up to link directly to machines anywhere in the market place for the purpose of internet diagnostics or even to look through on-board cameras. Most machines supplied by Stuga over the last ten years have been fitted with a series of cameras strategically placed to remotely view critical segments. The high definition full colour cameras also have sound and can record meaning that diagnostics have never been better or quicker.

The Stuga brand covers stand-alone sawing centers and machining centers together with fully automated sawing & machining lines offering varying outputs to suit the needs of all uPVC window and door fabricators. The range is constantly evolving and Stuga policy is to not make machines obsolete at any point in time with work-arounds always engineered as all suppliers do create obsolescence regularly. Longevity is a simple factor of life with Stuga machines and this is one great advantage of dealing with the manufacturer as opposed to a dealer who may change supplier at any time. Stuga machines often replace what were originally expensive German machines that are not worn out but simply become unserviceable for many reasons connected with obsolescence or simply a change of dealership.

Stuga started thirty years ago with a simple CNC router for producing aluminium patio doors, moved into automatic sawing of uPVC, and then into fully automated sawing and machining centers. With machines working in the market place that are anything up to thirty years old the company can offer an ongoing upgrade and refurbishment service. Machines can also be traded-in for new or refurbished/upgraded versions.

In more recent times Stuga introduced the AutoFlow-2 Sawing & Machining center that has a small footprint but an extended profile capacity suitable for large specialised profiles. It is also available in a ‘VS’ version for fabricators that make a significant volume of vertical sliders. The AutoFlow-2 can produce the frame to cill angle on ‘VS’ frame automatically without the need to reset the frame in the machine. It can also produce the holes in the cill for the mechanical fixings as well as saw cills up to 154mm wide.

The top selling machine for Stuga in 2014 and 2015 has been the flagship ZX4 sawing & machining center which can produce 800 to 1,000 or more windows per week. The ZX4 was first introduced ten years ago but has been constantly updated since. Rather than change the popular and well-known name it has been upgraded by regular new MK’s and is now up to the ‘MK6’ version. While looking similar to the 2006 MK1 the current MK6 model is very different in many respects and although some changes are simply features there are also more significant improvements like a full state of the art Beckhoff control system and the very latest drives controlling the many CNC axis. The ZX4 is as fast as its German competitors but is built here in the UK and may well still be running after they have become obsolete, based on the experience of history.

At the heart of every Stuga sawing & machining center is a rotary tooling system and one of these will be exhibited at The FIT SHOW this year. Limited stand space precludes Stuga from showing a full sawing & machining line.