When it comes to cabinet doors it’s important to get your details and proportions correct. The customisable range of cabinet doors from Sage Doors allows you to create bespoke details that are able to be varied for each design.

The success of an interior space is often dependent on the small design moves made at the very outset of the project; proportions and design details need to align perfectly to please the eye.
In kitchens, particularly, linear details and the proportions of cabinetry needs to be carefully considered so there aren’t odd, thin or thick bits jarring the visual continuity of the space. This can be difficult to achieve with standard sized cabinet door ranges, because the one-size-fits-all approach often creates odd-looking lines or strange proportions on the edges of a door.
Sage Doors have addressed this issue with their highly bespoke range of Optidoor cabinet doors.

“We use the words ‘customisable’ and ‘variable’ to describe the Optidoor range,” says Sage Doors Operations Manager Lydia Posthuma. “The customisable part is the aspects that you can change, for example, changing the size of the frame and setting the size of all the dimensions within the design of a linear profile door, whether it’s a frame or lineal routed design. The variable part is when we automatically adjust those proportions and lines to fit the design of the kitchen or space so that the profile looks consistent across the design, with no flat bits on the edge of your door.”

The flexibility of this approach makes specifying a customised and high-end look incredibly easy. Added to this, Sage Doors offers a wide range of styles including: Shaker-style framed doors; narrow-framed traditional doors with a fine bead; mid-century modern-style doors with a rounded, channel detail; and a number of lineal, routed styles; as well as the traditional V-groove.
“People can choose a style but they also have the option of customising that style, like adding extra length at the bottom of a round channel-style door to create that radiator kind of look.”
Flutes and waves are some of the latest styles added to the collection, and these reflect the trends for lineal and Art Deco aesthetics that have been seen in design shows across Europe this year.

“The difference between our lineal products and a lot of other lineal products on the market is that cabinet makers or designers can literally design it however they want, and when we’re making the doors we actually make the design automatically fit to the panel,” says Lydia. “So they can set up what their maximum spacing will be, and then when we’re cutting it we’ll fit it to the size of the panel so they won’t end up with any big ugly flat bits on the sides.”

Cabinet doors are easily ordered on Sage Doors’ website, and the team at Sage Doors are able to support specifiers to design and specify a bespoke profile.
Another important benefit of Sage Doors’ collection is that it is made from HDF, rather than MDF.

“HDF is a very high density and moisture-resistant substrate compared to MDF, which makes it easier for the cabinet makers and painters to work with. Because the HDF is so much higher density, it is also more durable for long-term use in the kitchen.”

It means rather than creating a two-piece door, which limits the profiles that can be made, doors are created from a single piece of HDF. The material is also ideal for paint-ready doors because it’s a lot harder and denser, so it won’t chip as easily before or after it’s painted, and it’s the ideal surface for sanding.

“Our sanding system is set up quite differently than other companies, so the cabinet maker should be able to receive the doors and send them straight to their paint shop. We’ve got different sanding processes that are set up to ensure a consistent, smooth finish.”

Lydia says cabinet makers like the paint-ready finish and the high quality of the doors, and designers enjoy the customisability.

“The amount they can change and adjust profiles to fit their space is what makes the doors so great to use, and the number of lineal profiles that we have means there are just so many different options, which gives specifiers so many opportunities.”

Words by Archipro editorial team.

14 Feb 2020

Concrete is a sought-after material for many applications but it’s only recently become more commonplace in the kitchen. Here’s how to incorporate this luxurious look into the heart of the home.

Hand-troweled concrete has a unique and instantly recognisable appearance. Its slightly rough texture gives each panel a unique textural form. While concrete is now used for all manner of interior applications, it is still associated with an industrial aesthetic.

This in itself is a drawcard for designers and clients alike, as homes – and kitchens in particular – are re-envisaged with a freer palette of both form and colour. The traditional stark white kitchen is a concept that’s firmly rooted in the past as a more natural and free-flowing aesthetic, of both hue and texture, now represents the contemporary kitchen. Natural undertones and softer forms are key, along with a preference for multiple materials and tones to create deep, dynamic forms.

With the handle-less look all the rave in modern kitchen design, Sage Doors decided it was time to develop a Profile Handle for their edged door range, featuring laseredge for a seamless joint.

Sage Doors’ new Profile Handles are ideal for creating that sleek and modern handleless look.

Fully Laser-edged… and easy to fit!

The discreet new Profile Handle is fully laser-edged with one single piece of edgetape, providing a tough edge that won’t chip like lacquer or fall off. It’s durable, and, thanks to Sage Doors’ special Laseredge technology, is more seamless than traditional glued options.

Supplied ready to fit, Sage Doors Profile Handles make manufacturing handle-less kitchens easier than ever. Eliminating the time you spend in the factory installing extrusion handles or manufacturing them yourself also saves you valuable time and money.

Availability

Profile Handles are available in a range of our Acrygloss®, Acrymatte® and Invisedge®, Timbalook, Lookcrete colours.
NOTE: Acrygloss Mitred Handles will have a satin finish edgetape on the mitred edge. Dark colours will show a bit of whitening along the profile. This does not impact the quality of the product, and is purely aesthetic.

Non-stock colours can be achieved through a slightly different method, and are available for a larger range of colours.

Quoting and ordering are available online – just select ‘Profile Handle’ in the dropdown box on the left-hand-side of the ordering portal.

Get in touch if you’d like a Profile Handle sample!

Sage Doors is excited to announce their new trademark brand name – Invisedge™ (pronounced ‘envisage’)

Invisedge™ is Sage Doors’ melamine Laseredge doors.

What makes Sage Doors Invisedge™ different to other melamine doors with laseredge clashing?

• It’s the materials used
• It’s the machinery involved
• It’s the men employed
• It’s Invisedge™

Without these 3m’s, Invisedge™ wouldn’t be Invisedge™.

What’s different about our materials?

Our polypropylene Alphatape™ is custom made by MKT in Germany. The hard functional layer on the back of the edgetape (the bit that gets melted) is essential to creating a seamless edge that will stay that way long term. It also completely welds to itself in the corners and is colourfast.

What’s different about our machinery?

Our Homag edgebanders have been specially spec’ed and custom made to suit our (and your) requirements.

We have automated our edgebander in order to achieve consistency in the finished product. The automated edgebander includes auto-sizing and squaring, to ensure your doors are manufactured with consistency.

We have automated storage systems that sort and store board, and load it automatically onto our CNC’s, to ensure quick lead times & less handling.

Our machinery is regularly maintained and adjusted to ensure the best edge possible. Machine setup greatly influences the final look & an expensive machine is worthless if not properly set up and maintained.

What about our men?

Our engineers constantly run tests & checks on our machinery and finished product to ensure a high standard is maintained.

We develop our own automation machinery, software for ordering, and factory processes in-house.

The doors are cut, edged, checked and packed by our hardworking team.

Our friendly team are always here to answer any questions you may have, and are happy to guide you through our process and help you in any way possible. Please do not hesitate to contact us.

Our aim is to supply the highest quality doors available in New Zealand – quality is super important to us!

With Laseredge technology fast becoming the future in edge banding, future proof your business with Invisedge® today!

Can you Invisedge® the ultimate door in your next design?

Senosan GmbH, an Austrian based, plastic sheeting company has achieved worldwide recognition for their high gloss acrylic films. Senoplast GmbH (Senosan’s mother company) has been manufacturing acrylic sheeting for cabinetry finishes, as well as formable car and shower linings, for a long time. In 2011, they added AM1800TopX to their high gloss cabinetry finish range which we use for our Acrygloss® and Acrymatte® products.

We get this specialist acrylic pressed onto a high quality CARB2 (similar to E0 formaldehyde emission rating) moisture resistant MDF on world-leading equipment by our supplier in Europe. We partner closely with our suppliers to ensure we are happy with the products and processes, to ensure the highest quality doors.

The Structure of the Acrylic

This AM1800TopX (‘1800X’) high gloss finish differs from other materials on the market due to its depth of gloss, unique scratch resistance, and easy maintenance. It consists of a .5mm base layer of ABS, with .2mm PMMA (a type of acrylic), topped with a scratch resistant hardcoat on the surface. ABS gives better resistance to cracking than straight acrylic, and acrylic creates a better reflection than ABS. The combination of these two raw materials, united by co-extrusion, gives our Acrygloss increased strength, better colour stability, and higher cracking resistance than a straight acrylic option.

The Cherry on the Top

The cherry on the top – the scratch resistant hardcoat – is to make your job easier and stress free! This hardcoat adds durability, while not affecting the quality of the mirror-like finish. It also means you do not need to worry about accidentally scratching a panel while you pull off the protective film.

“How scratch resistant is Acrygloss?” you may ask. It’s passed IHD-W-466 Method 1 Class A with a loss of gloss of <20%. Don’t know what that means? Don’t worry!
How about this: it’s steel wool resistant. Senoplast’s testing method for scratch resistance is ‘SENO company standard QPA-25-LT’. The test involves rubbing the surface with steel wool, type 00 (the kind used for buffing and cleaning golf clubs or removing old finishes on antiques) with a load of 1kg. At 20 strokes, no scratches or changes are visible on the surface of Acrygloss.

Regular co-extruded acrylic gloss sheets which were traditionally used are soft and need to ‘cure’ for a day or two once the protective film is removed. Often a small tear created in the protective film during drilling and installation will mean a scratch in the door, only seen when the protective film is finally removed – not with Acrygloss®. No curing is required, as the surface is hard even before the protective film is removed. Even if the protective film is torn, the surface is normally un-scratched, eliminating many of the annoying surprise scratches noticed when the film is removed on site.

Why choose an acrylic over lacquer?

Why use acrylic gloss instead of lacquer or high gloss melamine? The depth of gloss is much greater. Look at a reflection in the distance (not your face! Look at something further away like a line in the window.) Is it a clear line? Or fuzzy? Acrylic gloss gives a much deeper reflection than most other options.

Acrygloss is easy to clean. With each order we supply a can of VuPlex, a special high gloss surface cleaner. VuPlex removes the static on the surface, making finger prints a thing of the past. The surface can easily be wiped clean using a soft, damp cloth.

NOTE: Although Acrygloss is scratch resistant, we still recommend you leave the protective film on the surface until the doors are installed.

3 July 2017

Sage Doors, a family owned business, has partnered with MKT GmbH from Germany to supply Alphatape™ laser edgetape to the cabinetmaking industry across New Zealand and Australia.

As the first company in New Zealand to begin manufacturing doors and panels using laseredge technology, Sage Doors needed to source a laser edgetape before they could begin production. MKT, a German edge tape manufacturer was soon chosen for their high quality product – Alphatape™.

Europe is known for quality when it comes to the furniture industry, and MKT is no exception. Sage Doors has partnered with MKT to become a leading supplier of Alphatape™ throughout New Zealand and Australia.

Running their own Homag KAL310 airTec edgebander to manufacture doors for cabinetmakers over the country, Sage Doors understands what is involved in achieving a seamless edge. Not all edgetapes are the same, and the quality of the edgetape used plays a huge role.

Laser edgetape consists of two layers: a ‘hard’ décor layer and a meltable functional layer. The ‘functional layer’ consists of polymers which enable it to melt faster than the outer surface of the edgebanding. When the functional layer is activated/melted and applied to the board, the melted functional layer fuses to the MDF to create a seamless joint.

What makes Alphatape™ different than other laser edgetapes on the market?

Alphatape™ features a very hard functional layer (back layer), which helps ensure a seamless edge. A soft functional layer catches dirt and looks like a glue line over time.

Rule of Thumb! To test the hardness of the functional layer, check whether
you can mark the functional layer with your thumbnail.
You should not be able to make any visible mark at all on the back of the functional layer.

Unlike other laser edgebandings, MKT Alpha-Tape Zero can fully weld to itself at the joint in the corners.

Why Polypropylene (PP) instead of PVC or ABS?

Hot-air and other laser edgebanding techology uses extreme heat to melt the functional layer on the back of the tape. MKT’s Alpha Tape Zero PP (Polypropylene) edgetape is the ideal material for this hot-air technique as it doesn’t shrink during cooling like other plastics, ensuring a seamless edge with no shrinkage step in the join.

Polypropylene is also much more environmentally friendly compared to other plastics.

How it’s manufactured

To achieve the highest quality functional layer, MKT’s Alpha Tape Zero PP is co-extruded as opposed to post-coated.
Co-extruded = imagine two toothpaste tubes squirting out edgetape material, one on top of the other, onto the extrusion line. The décor layer comes through the top hole and the functional layer through the bottom as the edgetape is being made.
Post-coated = regular ABS edgetape is manufactured, after which a heat activated glue/functional layer is applied to the back. This is similar in fashion to a preglued edgetape – we would not recommend this!

Alphatape™ is manufactured in jumbo rolls 405mm wide to ensure the functional and décor layers are a consistent thickness, colour and finish. This jumbo roll method also eliminates variation caused by a change of tooling and extrusions for different widths.
The wide rolls of edgetape are then sliced into required widths (we stock a range of 21mm, 28mm, 35mm, 40mm & 63mm).

Colour and finish matching

MKT’s Alphatape™ is tailor-made to match the board on which it is applied. With laser edgetape, two colour matches are required – the colour of the décor layer and the functional layer. It’s important these colours are very precise to create an invisible, seamless joint.
One huge advantage MKT has in their precise colour matching lies in their sister company – Printec GmbH. Printec manufacture and supply a wide spectrum of plastic dyes and inks to many market sectors in Europe.

MKT puts quality first; during the manufacturing process, the edgetape regularly undergoes manual and electronic inspections of various characteristics, including the colour and/or printed image to ensure a high quality material.

Sage Doors stocks a range of colours and finishes, from velvet and textured woodgrain to  Extreme Gloss™ to Extreme Matte™.
The Excellent Gloss ™ finish features an exceptional high gloss level, like that of an acrylic gloss material. (Most high gloss edgetapes are dull compared to the board they are applied to).

If you have a laser edgebander and would like a free sample of MKT’s Alpha Tape Zero PP edge tape to try, contact us and we’ll courier a sample pack to you.

13 Feb 2017

Creating a seamless finish with Invisedge consists of ‘seeing what everyone else has seen, but thinking what no-one else has thought’ (Albert Szent-Gyorgyi) – it’s not as easy as it looks!

Many cabinetmakers understand the struggle to achieve a seamless edge on high gloss panels. Sage Doors invested in the world-industry-leading brand of edgebanders, Homag, to achieve this. A lot of on-going research and development goes into improving the finished product of Acrygloss® and Laseredge™. Modifications and adjustments are regularly made to the edgebander to improve the finished quality. By having their own onsite technician, Sage Doors can fine tune their edgebander whenever required to keep the quality of the edge consistent.

Most edgebanders are set up with 2mm radius tooling (corner rounding). However, using 2mm tooling on 1 or 1.2mm edgetape creates an uneven radius that is almost sharp on one side. The expense spent on the HotAir technology is wasted with sub-standard machining on the finished product/edge.

Sage Doors realized that they would achieve a better finish if their edge bander was set up exclusively for 1.2mm laser edge tape; therefore, all aggregates in their machine are fitted with special 1.2mm radius tooling.

With edgetape dimensions varying between brands, Sage Doors chose to use just one brand of edgetape to get a consistent, quality finish. After trying many different brands of edging, Sage Doors found that MKT laser edgetape was the best quality in the market, and spec’d out their machine specifically for it.

A bad corner rounding unit can make even the highest quality edge tapes look ugly – creating a seamless edge isn’t as simple as it looks.

Why is MKT laser edgetape so much better than other laser edgetape?

The incredibly hard functional layer (the back side of laser edgetape that contains polymers to help it melt faster) on MTK’s Alpha Tape Zero PP helps create a seamless edge. A soft functional layer catches dirt and looks like a glue joint over time, defeating the purpose of using laser edge technology.
Rule of Thumb! To test the hardness of the functional layer, check whether you can mark the functional layer with your thumbnail. You should not be able to make any visible mark at all on the back of the functional layer.

Unlike other laser edgebandings, MKT Alpha-Tape Zero can fully weld to itself at the joint in the corners.

MKT has many different finish options for their edgebanding. One of them, their Excellent Gloss™ edgetape has a very high gloss level; you can barely see the difference between Acrygloss® board and the edge banding.  Most high gloss edgetapes are dull compared to the board they are applied to.

Polypropylene shrinks less than PVC or ABS, making it ideal for laser edgebanding where extreme heat is involved.

Sage Doors realized they would need to use MTK’s Alpha Tape Zero PP laser edgetape  to be able to produce a product to the standard that they wanted to achieve.