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.