SCM Minimax ME25 Edgebamder

[William A Johnston]

I have a small cabinet shop with a total of 4 employees that built and install mainly melamine interior with laminate exterior commercial cabinets. We currently build around 100 cabinets per month and farm out the cutting and edge banding to another local shop. There edge banding machine is old and doesn't do a great job so we're are looking at purchasing our first major machine.

Does anyone have experience with this particular machine? It has a lot of features the more expensive machines offer. We mainly do 1mm PVC tape and occasionally will do a wood tape and laminate edging.

Any comments about the quality of the ECM equipment and customer service would be appreciated.

Thank you,

Bill

[Erik Loza]

I sold Minimax banders for over 12 years, including a number of ME25's, and had good luck with them. It's a lot of machine for the price and would probably do what you need. Regarding banders, I'll tell you three things:

1.) Unless you want another project, don't buy a used bander, no matter how good the price.

2.) If you buy an ME25, pay to have a technician come out and set it up for you. I sense that you probably have not owned or run a bander before and the ME25 is not plug-and-play, despite what any rep may tell you. There is a pretty good tutorial on Youtube for setting up the ME25 but that still is not the same as having a tech calibrate it and walk your crew through the setup with the different types of banding materials you may use.

3.) Like with any bander, the quality of your result will depend on the maintenance of the machine and also, the quality glue and the quality of tape you use. I can suggest a couple of different brands of glue and a good vendor if that helps but will say that the only customer nightmares I ever had were with shops that did not keep their banders clean, did not have a good drier on their compressed air system, used cheap glue, or who "got lost" making adjustments to the unit.

I realize that's not a simple answer but you're asking about an edgebander. Best of luck in your search.

Erik (former Minimax rep for 12+ years)

[William A Johnston]

Erik, thanks for the advice and I would sure like recommendation on a glue supplier. I've used an edge bander a few times but don't have enough experience on them to make a hill of beans. I have been Reading a lot about different ones and you hit the nail on the head about cleaning and maintenance. This is a huge investment for us so I will make sure of the cleaning.

Thanks again,

Bill

[Peter Kelly]

Out of curiosity, how will you be sizing and drilling panels? Still farming that out?

[Erik Loza]

William, many of my customers use ESI...

http://www.edgebanding-services.com/

As far as glue goes, you're fine with both Dorus and Jowat. There are many formulations of each. I'd call a rep at ESI and explain your needs. Best of luck,

Erik

[William A Johnston]

Peter,

There is a shop down a block from my shop that has a CNC machine. I use Planit drafting software and they also have it as their platform for the CNC so I bring them a file on a flash drive and then they cut 100 percent of my parts. I do all my own measuring and design and shop drawings. They label all parts and I print assembly sheets and were off to the races.

Bill

[Peter Kelly]

I purchased from Westlund Distributing back when I had an edgebander. https://www.edgebanding.com/Default.asp