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When Craig and wife Nichole decided to ‘bite the bullet’ and refurbish their 70s-built holiday house in Lake Cathie, the first job was to replace the property’s original 17 doors.

“Because we live in the NSW Southern Highlands, we couldn’t be there to co-ordinate multiple tradesmen,” Craig said. ...

“First a carpenter would have to come and measure, before coming back to prepare them for hanging and screwing them on.Then, the painter would have to make three visits before the remaining door hardware could be fitted. Co-ordinating that from 500km away would have been a nightmare, so it was a godsend getting the doors delivered already sized and professionally painted, and installed in less than day.”

CAD profiling the beachside holiday house’s original door frames presented challenges. OId door frames often warp over time, but our proprietary CAD-based door technology allows NC Doors to incorporate any variations in each frame into the manufacturing programs we created. Essentially, each door is unique: sized and shaped, with its hardware cut outs removed as it passes through our CNC routing machine. The fit is perfect first time, every time.

For the internal doors, Craig and Nichole chose NC Doors energy-efficient doors with a lightweight core that keeps warm air in during winter and hot air out in summer. Our painter finished them with two undercoats and a topcoat of Lexicon White in our factory’s painting bay. They looked striking against the stained timber door jambs.

NC Doors’ general manager Barry Drewitt described NC Doors’ technology as ‘a game changer’ for commercial and residential builders, and home renovators – especially for people like the Mahers living outside the area.

“A job like that could never be done in one day using the traditional methods when you have to co-ordinate a team of tradesmen. Our technology is quick and clean – the doors fit perfectly first time and there’s no rubbish to remove or dust to clean up afterwards.”

Builders love the flexibility and economy NC Doors offers. Being able to get doors supplied with hinges, locks, seals and any other hardware pre-fitted in our factory saves them long preparing doors for installation. However, sometimes builders like Ben Tracey, of Newcastle-based Insight Building Services, need to be able to add their own finishing touches. ...

Keeping a handle on costs

NC Doors CAD-profiled the frames before supplying Ben with seven sets of interconnected fire-rated door pairs to replace the standard doors in the suites at Kirkton Park, a luxury accommodation, event and conference venue in the Hunter Valley.

“Insight is a regular client and the only reason we didn’t fit the hardware this time was that Ben was waiting on delivery of handles and locks to match the other doors in the suites,” NC Doors’ Managing Director, Barry Drewitt explained.

“Ben only had to screw on the hardware. For us to be able to do everything else in the factory meant a big saving in time and on-site labour costs. And, there’s no dust and rubbish to clean up afterwards.”

Quick turnarounds, competitive prices

For Ben, spending hours cutting in hinge rebates and drilling lock cut-outs doesn’t add up. Not when doors can be pre-fitted and finished in our factory, then packaged and delivered to the site. “Barry responds when I need a quick turnaround and his prices are always competitive,” the young builder said.

“Financially, it’s very attractive to be able to get quality doors finished to the stage that suits me for each particular job. NC Doors makes the whole process easy and with so much else to think about it’s great knowing the doors will arrive when I need them and be ready to go straight in."

Designing and manufacturing metal-clad timber doors for the ANSTO nuclear medical science complex in Sydney called for the skills of the entire NC Doors’ team. Our CAD designer Harris Butler visited the site of what is the world’s newest nuclear medicine facility to profile the door frames, capturing their exact dimensions. Collaborating with our CNC technician Jackson Sauer, the pair then developed the production programs required to size, shape and rout each of the door panels, which our fabricating team built by hand. ...

NC Doors computer-assisted manufacturing process removes the hinge rebate panels and lockset cut-outs, so the hardware can be fitted in our factory. This allows the doors to arrive ready to be installed in hours, instead of days when this pre-installation work has to be done onsite by a carpenter.

Our technology handled complex door designs

Several of the doors incorporated fire-rated Pyropanel cores, others had acoustic-rated centres, while the security doors featured high-strength block cores, in 40-50mm thicknesses. A pair of galvanised steel-sheeted solid core doors (pictured left with Sean) featured vision panels with aluminium surrounds.

“Where other door companies might struggle, NC Doors’ computer-assisted design and manufacturing technology can easily handle complex doors like these,” NC Doors’ General Manager and Director, Barry Drewitt said.

“We were working with non-standard sizes and a variety of materials, while the hardware was anything but commonplace. In the process of writing new programs for our CNC routing machine, we incorporated some very unusual door componentry into the designs.”

Precisely fitting doors and seals were critical

Our two most experienced installers, company Director Ian Drewitt and Sean Cummins finished the doors in our factory, adding the Colourbond metal cladding to the faces and edges of those pictured below, along with much of the hardware.

One of the challenges in designing the facility was accommodating various atmospheric pressures throughout the complex, which made it critical that the doors and seals fitted precisely. Pharmaceutical facilities are kept under positive pressure to keep dust contaminants out, while the nuclear industry facilities have negative atmospheric pressure to ensure that nothing escapes.

NC Doors again partnered with door installation specialists Robson Doors, who called on our technology for the project, which is being built at Lucas Heights by Icon Co, the Australian construction company which formed a combined construction services business with Cockram Construction in 2018.

“While these doors certainly were a challenge, custom-made non-standard doors are what we specialise in,” Barry Drewitt said.