Laser Marking Improves Visor Production Efficiency and Reduces Errors in Logo Marking
Every Visor blind is tailor-made by hand as custom work in Kempele, Finland. Visor delivers customers unique solutions and products planned together with an expert. Precision, high quality and customer-oriented solutions made Cajo a natural partner to Visor in order to improve production efficiency.
Finnish Visor manufactures custom-made design blinds. This year, Visor celebrates the company’s 50th anniversary. Every Visor product is Finnish design awarded with the Key Flag – a symbol awarded by The Association for Finnish Work in recognition of a product made in Finland. The company’s own product development and patented fastener solutions have made Visor a pioneer in the field. Thanks to the widest fastener selection on the market and Visor’s own product development, the blinds can be installed on any kind of window and door glass. Visor can respond to the needs of for example an industrial customer by customising suitable fasteners for their products. “For example, we can deliver a window factory a fastener that fits their window like a charm,” says Visor Factory Manager Tuukka Liukko. Many manufacturers use ready-made components from wholesale businesses for their blinds and fasteners. This means that tailored solutions cannot be realized in the same scope as Visor can.
From Logo Labels to Laser Marking Products With a Solution Integrated into the Production Line
The partnership between Cajo Technologies and Visor began when Visor was trying to find an alternative way to mark their logo on their products. Before the partnership with Cajo, the logo was attached by a sticky label to the aluminium profile of the blinds. The challenge with this technique was to confirm that each product was attached with the correct logo. Several logos were in use since some customers receive tailor-made branded products. Cajo was chosen as a partner when it became clear laser marking could be used to mark logos. Factory Manager Tuukka Liukko contacted Cajo and the process was started to find a suitable laser marking solution for Visor’s needs.
”We set out to quickly test how the marking would function,” Liukko confirms.
At the start of the partnership, Visor was just about to invest in a new profiling machine that was tailor-made to suit the company’s needs. This enabled the Cajo laser marking system to be integrated easily as part of the production line. Cajo’s laser marking system has increased production speed while automatisation is used to confirm that the laser-marked logo is always right and consistently in the correct place.
The ultimate all-around laser marking unit Cajo Tailor™ is made in Finland and can be integrated efficiently on any production line.
”When there are several customers, there is always a risk that a wrong label is attached to the profile. Machine controlling another machine with a full understanding of what to mark in each profile eliminates that risk,” Liukko tells.
The partnership with Cajo has been smooth sailing. Visor Factory Manager Tuukka Liukko sees Cajo as a company easy to approach. Additional praise goes to the professionalism and experience of Cajo experts.
”At Cajo, they could right away produce samples understanding the task at hand,” Liukko praises.
Laser Marking Increases Global Production Efficiency
Visor manufactures about 250 000 blinds every year with customers in Finland and across the world. In addition to consumers, Visor also serves business customers. In production, however, it is important to keep in mind that the end users of products manufactured for companies are always regular consumers. About half of Visor blind production goes to the domestic market. Another significant target country is Sweden. Visor belongs to the Lumon group which manufactures terrace and balcony glazing. Thanks to this, also Spain is a significant end-user country for the company. In addition, Visor products can be found in, for example, Norway, the United States and Chile.
At the moment, Cajo machines are used to mark products only with logos. However, the current system also enables serial numbers to be laser-marked on products. Visor’s experience with Cajo laser marking systems has been so good that similar solutions have been implemented in other factories of the group. For example, in factories that belong to the same Lumon group, Cajo’s laser marking technology is used to identify products in Kouvola, Finland, and in Canada and Spain. The factories manufacture balcony and terrace glass profiles. In automated production, the serial number always communicates essential information for the next production stage, which can be machine-read from the product. Like in laser marking of logos, this makes production more efficient and minimizes the occurrence of human errors in the production process.
”Thanks to laser marking serial numbers, the production stays effective and in the next production stage, the correct information can be found right away and read from the serial number. The serial number marking also speeds up the installation of the products at the customer and makes it easier for customer service to find the order information later, if necessary,” Liukko confirms.
Watch a video to see how a Cajo laser marking is made.
High-Quality Laser Marking of Logos Correlates With Product Quality
In Visor products, high quality is an exceedingly important criterion. The high quality becomes apparent already in the design phase. All manufactured products must be functional and durable. In addition, Visor’s high-quality products can be individually tailor-made according to the customer’s needs. The logo marking must follow the same quality criteria as product manufacturing. High-quality logo marking is a tell-tale mark of product quality.
”When premium products are manufactured, every detail must match accordingly,” Liukko confirms.
