Danish furniture design with a perfect surface finish

2020/04/14   |   Hammel   |   Denmark

In the north of Denmark, not far from Aarhus, the second largest city in the country, lies the small town of Hammel. Hammel Furniture has had its headquarters here since 1961.
Over an area of 25,000 m², the 100 employees produce home furniture such as dining tables, coffee tables and cabinets.
As well as following Danish design traditions, the furniture is developed with a clear focus on functionality and flexibility. Hammel is proud that both the design and the production take place completely in Denmark.
The furniture, with an impressive future-oriented design and small details, is produced in batch sizes from 5 to 2000.
The 500 items of furniture that leave the Hammel Furniture factory every day are manufactured from panel materials such as chipboard and MDF, but also from solid wood.
They are very popular with a wide range of international customers from Scandinavia and Germany but also the USA.

Impressive casting from HOMAG

The sanding machines that previously stood in the painting line were acquired at the end of the 1980s.
They have provided an excellent service for 30 years and are now going into well-deserved retirement.
Just like technology has changed over the last three decades, so have the requirements for furniture and furniture surfaces.
To reach the right conclusions, Hammel Furniture gave itself plenty of time for extensive research and the search for the correct replacement investment.
Four different manufacturers and their wide-belt sanding machines were inspected and tested. At the end of this process, the SANDTEQ machines from HOMAG impressed Hammel Furniture with their good machine quality as well as their extensive application properties. 
An easy belt change, intuitive operation with the powerTouch control system and the mps system with its very fine part detection, individual programming and perfect adjustment of the sanding force meant that HOMAG stood out during casting in the end.

Easy integration into the existing production

The two SANDTEQ models W-325 CH and W-345 RQEH—which, thanks to their configuration, are ideally suited to processing veneered and painted surfaces—were easily integrated into the line without interrupting production for a long time. The setup took seven days, with the integration of the new machines taking five days.
The operators were trained immediately by HOMAG service technicians, which meant that within one day, the line with the two new wide-belt sanding machines for finishing surfaces was fully ready for operation. 

A look into the future

With the two new HOMAG sanding machines, Hammel Furniture—which has been a HOMAG customer for 20 years—has given itself more options. Because, for example, both coffee and wine leave aggressive residues on surfaces, the company now has new options in sanding for manufacturing a resistant painted surface. Veneer sanding, fine sanding and intermediate varnish sanding can now be realized in completely different forms than in the past.

In the future, Hammel Furniture is planning to produce bathroom furniture or kitchens and, with this furniture for damp rooms, will open up a completely new group of customers.
The production could then even run in a two-shift operation.
The company is also thinking about feeding the machines and supporting the employees with robots.