Centor Global Services creates doors and windows with precision engineering, while 3D printing the complex pieces in-house with Markforged 3D printers.
Centor Global Services is a Brisbane-based private company with a global reach. They manufacture high-end doors, screening systems and door hardware for the housing market world-wide. They manufacture their products at factories around the world, but when it comes to the technical components, they create them quickly on the Markforged 3D printers at a press of a button.
Set among industrial roads, railways and overpasses, Centor’s office is an oasis in a lot of respects. Maybe it was quieter 70years ago when the Centor office opened, but there is a respectable calm about the place when AMT visited just after the Sydney AMW show in June.
Dave Chappell, Group Manager, Product and Engineering for Centor Global Services showed us through the facilities. Centor’s in-house Product Design Centre is responsible for the design and testing of products available around the world. Centor was the first to come up with designs to make folding doors weather-proof and strong enough for external openings. “That was the mid-90s,” explains Chappell. “Ten years ago we set up distribution in the United Kingdom and a reseller in the US as well.” Centor now manufacture in Brisbane (Australia), Chicago (USA), Stryków (Poland) and Nanjing (China) and distribute products around the world.
Centor knew that manufacturing the finest sliding door track would lead to a solid high-end market. They produce in-door screens and the hardware for the doors, with double- and triple-glazed windows. Markforged is a differentiated player in the advanced manufacturing sector and assisted Centor’s engineers and industrial designers to quickly come up with solutions.
Initially, when Centor’s engineers wanted to accelerate innovation with R&D prototyping, they were stifled by lead time challenges. The lead times to make each prototype were simply too long, and there was never time to squeeze in enough iterations. They had to bite the bullet much earlier in the design process. But bringing in Markforged printers allowed them to modify prototypes and print new models overnight. Ever since, Centor has been able to arrive at the best design to bring to tooling — allowing them to make better products.
When the COVID-19 pandemic started, Centor used additive manufacturing to battle supply chain challenges, with many parts they needed becoming difficult to procure. During this time, they expanded the number of parts they printed, branching out into 3D printing more composite and metal end-use parts than ever.
As soon as they jumped into this hugely complex area, they stole a solid market.
“We then embarked on a journey we called integrated doors,” says Chappell. “We’re Australian, we love design, we could do everything with eight-gauge wire, we could, pretty much, make 100% of everything. We asked our designers, what would a folding door be like, if you were given no constraints? No limits to the design and construction?” The resulting Centor hardware systems offer architects, and homeowners the innovative products they require. They combine durability and flexibility and from the feedback they receive, the doors continue to operate smoothly for decades. “The doors for the Australian market are designed here in Brisbane and with help from Markforged’s knowhow we are now investigating printing metal parts,” says Chappell. “In order to produce the more complex plastic parts, we of course turn to the Markforged 3D printers, inhouse, because we can just print them.”
Centor makes these doors in Chinese factories for the Asian market, in Poland for the European market, and Illinois for the US and Canadian market. They have to make the doors where the customers are, to keep freight costs down.
In the assembly line downstairs, the small team is putting together doors with impressive accuracy. There are parts of hinges, cogs, lefts, rights, jambless, doubles and combos, because the range is so heavily customised. The whole system of parts is generated depending on what features are required in the end product, and this is fed through a database when the final quote is provided.
“To bring costs down, to accelerate the production speed, we listened to our jig operators down on the floor, here in Brisbane” says Chappell. “We started by generating tool holders and parts for the jigs from our new Markforged 3D printers.” Centor has four factories around the world, and the smart thing to do was to 3D print four times as many, and distribute around the world with a vision to have 3D printers in every factory in the future.
“A normal company would have to deal with five other companies to make these doors, but we do the lot,” he quips. “We’re still very much Australian, but that doesn’t mean we have to do everything here.” Centor aims at the top 5% of the residential market only. There are also many parts of the assembly line down here which have been 3D printed to streamline the construction and passage of the whole range of product that comes past. “Markforged 3D printers aren’t just good at creating parts of the doors,” Chappell explains. “The team get the designers to whip up modifications to the entire workshop.” With the Markforged printers in their office, ready to go, the designers can focus on high-value, end-use manufacturing applications, printed at the point of need.
MARKFORGED 3D PRINTERS
When Centor introduced the Markforged 3D printers about nine years ago, it was like opening up the world to the designers. They now have three Composite 3D Printers in the design office. Instead of staring at a 2D plan, or a 3D model on a screen, they could ‘Just Print’. Simplicity of the workflow enables them to focus on the design. “They were a little tentative at first, because consumables cost a little bit, but the immediate payback was an acceleration and accuracy in idea generation. The Markforged 3D printers took no time at all to set up, and they are used a lot more than the paper printer which sits alongside,” says Chappell. “Because there are no constraints to what they can do, they just go for it.”
The medium in the Markforged Onyx can be plastic or a carbon fibre-filled nylon, which are both applied from a continuous roll. The designers use the Markforged Digital Forge, the central digital inventory that holds designs that can be printed on demand at any location around the world. Eiger reinforces a work culture of innovation because barriers to testing and trying new designs are reduced. STL files are exported straight out of Solidworks and real-world parts can be ready for handling the morning after pressing the ‘Print’ button. Centor is investigating printing in metal with Markforged 3D printing but for the moment, they do all their plastic 3D printing in-house.
Markforged offers real-world applications in local manufacturing to overcome supply chain challenges, reduce manufacturing costs, speed up the time to market and increase innovation.