BJS doubles wood coating productivity with latest technologies

About BJS

BJS Czech s.r.o. is part of the Swedish industrial group BJS Group AB, which began trading in 1917 and now has several production sites across Europe. BJS Czech was formed in 2005 and has become one of the largest furniture producers in the Czech Republic, specialising in the manufacture of high quality flat pack furniture finished with pigmented lacquers.

Hana Kudrnová, Business Development Manager at BJS Czech, begins by outlining the company structure: “We have around 400 employees here in Humpolec, we have two factories… BJS Components and BJS Czech, and then in Ukraine we have BJS Furniture and BJS Components. We have one customer, it is a multinational furniture supply chain, very well known. We are producing furniture in traditional Scandinavian design and we are supplying North America, some destinations in Asia Pacific, but most of the business is for Europe.”

Focus on innovation to solve inefficiencies

The company has strengthened its position as a key supplier in this highly competitive marketplace through ongoing investment in the latest technologies. This focus on continuous innovation and advancement has most recently led to the introduction of a new, state-of-the-art wood coating line that combines soft-roller coating technology and UV LED curing, to dramatic effect: productivity on this new line is double that of the older conventional lines, which rely on spray-coating and oven-drying processes.

Filip Linsbauer, Technical Manager at BJS Czech, highlights the inefficiency of the spray-coating process: “Conventionally we use spraying technology to apply several layers of the paint on the part. We had to run through the line two times and there was a lot of waste of the material along the way because of inefficiency of the spraying process. We were challenged by our customer to push the technology a little bit further, that was the reason why we defined the new setup of the roller coating line.”

The solution: Soft rollers and UV LED

In addition to the reduction in waste achieved with soft-roller coating, the new methodology means that the furniture components can be fully coated with only one pass, as Kudrnová explains: “In the past, our main product, the components for it we had to pass four times to cover both surfaces with spraying technology, with spraying the base coat and then the top coat, but then we developed the technology of soft rollers using the 100% UV cure by the LED lamps… we are able to run it one surface in one pass.”

The choice of UV LED over Arc curing

When developing the concept for the new production line, UV LED curing was favoured over UV Arc, primarily for its anticipated effect on energy costs and consumables, along with the associated sustainability benefits that LED brings. As Linsbauer explains, they knew what they wanted to achieve with LED curing, but at that stage they did not know who to work with for its integration: “When we developed technology setup for the profile parts, we selected instead of conventional lamps, LED curing. We were looking for the right partner to help us with the implementation of LED, we are in the business where we need to achieve quality of the curing, and to make our furniture as affordable as possible, so cost is also an important factor for us.”

BJS works with several trusted coatings suppliers, and Linsbauer saw an opportunity to work with one such supplier to ensure that he and his team could make an informed decision on their planned investment: “We wanted to do really thorough testing to ensure that we can achieve maximum speed and capacity without compromising the quality. We really wanted to see the performance of this LED in practice, we utilised the opportunity to travel to the Swedish laboratory of one of the paint suppliers, and then spent a week testing three different suppliers of the LED lamps… and we found out that GEW was the best.”

Production advantages of UV LED

In addition to the foreseen benefits that LED curing has since brought to BJS, Linsbauer points to several further and unexpected advantages: “With the conventional mercury lamps you see degradation and variation over time, which is of course affecting the quality of the products coming out of the line. So if you use LED it is producing consistently much more flat output, which is ensuring that your quality is much more stable as well.”

He continues: “LEDs can start and be switched off immediately, if the parts are not coming through the line, we can react almost instantaneously to these situations and stop the curing process, and save energy there. You cannot do this for conventional lamps. Implementation of the GEW line allowed us to push the machine to the limit, which is around 30 metres. Usage of the LED lamps is also much more convenient for the operators because thanks to the direct integration into the line control, they don’t have to pay attention to it, it’s working flawlessly. If you have better control over your process, you can significantly reduce the scrap which is coming out of your line.”

Reducing waste, increasing sustainability

It is this sharp focus on minimising waste, whilst reducing energy consumption and production costs, that has been driven by the ethos of BJS’s forward-thinking client: “Our customer is really building their brand on environmental friendliness, so we follow with what we do here. We have installed energy management system which is controlling and constantly measuring the consumption of the line, during the production and also during the stoppages. We’ve taken sample of production with the old technology and new technology, and we found out that this overall consumption of the line was reduced by 30%. Our customer is encouraging us to continue with the processes that will gradually replace all the conventional lamps with the LEDs by the end of 2027.”

BJS also shares correlated energy consumption data with the customer, as Linsbauer explains: “GEW monitoring is giving us information to complement our energy monitoring system by reporting the consumption of the unit. The combination of our own energy management system and information that we are getting from the GEW report is helping us to communicate the savings that we are achieving, to our customer.”

On the subject of sustainability, Kudrnová concludes: “This investment gives us the opportunity to build double capacity… and we are able to save energy and save lacquers and avoid higher waste, and of course from a sustainability point of view it’s huge progress as well.”

The ease of transition to LED coatings

Consistency of production quality is paramount in a high volume environment such as BJS. Significant material costs and associated expenses can escalate quickly, should any production fault occur. With this in mind, Linsbauer thoroughly researched the topic of transitioning to LED coatings and was pleasantly surprised with the eventual outcome: “Conversion from the classical paints used for mercury lamps to the LED-curable paints was quite straightforward, because all the major paint suppliers that we work with are already familiar with the technology and are able to develop the paint we need. Our suppliers understand the need to transition so they fully supported us through the whole process and made it much easier for us to switch. Generally we are using three different paint suppliers, some of them have already in their laboratories installed test units, so they can assist us very easily with the conversion of the paints. Both paints for LED and for conventional can be applied at the same speeds and the same techniques.”

He adds: “Coverage and opacity of the paint is very well controlled. It can happen that UV curable paints are little bit more expensive, but compared to the waste which is done during the spraying, even these a little bit more expensive paints are much more financially effective. But if you dedicate enough time for the testing you can achieve the same financial cost for both.

“We had to test all the surface properties of the products produced using old paint and new paint, because our customer requires extensive testing of the surface durability, quality and colour… and we found that LED paints are meeting all the criteria.”

The installation process

The simultaneous implementation of two new technologies – soft-roller application and UV LED curing – was a complex and potentially problematic venture for BJS. However, as the project progressed, Linsbauer found an unexpected and straightforward solution: “As part of the implementation process we were faced with the challenge of how to integrate this new LED to the conveyors and to the roller-coating. We found out that GEW was very flexible, they even offered to do the installation at the supplier of the line, do all the testing there so we could get the whole line as a package from the supplier with the LED units already integrated, connected and ready to go, so we just switch it on and it was running… and I really appreciate it because it was very open and very good, very flexible from GEW.”

Summarising the benefits

Hana Kudrnová summarises her view on the advantages of the new technologies: “With the installation of LED lamps we are able to introduce in our company new production ranges with more complicated profiles, because now we are able to paint them in one pass technology.

“I think definitely it helped our competitiveness because our competitors are still not able to do it. We are the first one in our segment who are able to run it in serial production, so definitely this is our advantage. The plan is to continue switching current UV lamps to LED lamps, so for every financial year we are preparing how many lamps will be switched to LED. We are doing this to eliminate the energy consumption due to environmental reasons… we want to be leader and continue in this sustainable way.”

Filip Linsbauer concludes with words of guidance for those considering a switch to UV LED: “My advice to anyone who would like to step into LED curing… don’t be afraid, the benefits are there, there is some effort needed but at the end it will pay off. If there is anyone using conventional lamps, definitely I would recommend them to go for the LED and move ahead.”

The BJS case study video

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To learn more about how GEW’s LED technology can improve production for wood coating companies, visit our wood coating page: gewuv.com/wood

Alternatively, to find out more about our next generation, water-cooled UV LED curing system, LeoLED2, go here: gewuv.com/leoled2

To learn more about BJS, visit their website: www.bjs.cz