You could say that Carol Sanford flipped the script on machinery, like he had in so many circumstances throughout his career. In the 1950s, when he couldn’t sell his modular homes in Ohio, he shipped them to Florida. When he couldn’t sell them there, he turned to selling site-built...

Quality Assurance continues beyond the truss plant, so it’s important to keep that in mind as you’re preparing your products for handling and use by someone else. For example, this article poses the question: should component manufacturers (CMs) mark the ends of trusses? For that...

The name “Bill McAlpine” has such resonance in the component industry that when ITW acquired the company and removed his name, they soon found value in returning to the Alpine moniker. There are many reasons McAlpine earned that singular honor, but one of the least recognized is...

In 2013, I launched LimTek Solutions with a clear mission: to promote, market, and sell Enventek’s groundbreaking truss manufacturing technology, first developed in 2007. For over a decade, it’s been full steam ahead and we have cultivated an impressive Feed the Beast! customer base....

A great American competitive struggle broke out in truss shops around Miami in 1957. The owners of these shops learned that two new plates had hit the market, and both worked without supplementary nailing. The Sanford Grip-Plate that they were using required hundreds of nails to be hammered into...

I’ve been asked: do you always need a shop drawing or the engineering to inspect a truss? The quick answer if you are conducting an ANSI/TPI 1 Chapter 3 audit is that you must have a design drawing that specifies plate sizes, placement, and lumber grade requirements in addition to overall...

Inspirado por las frecuentes solicitudes de una referencia rápida, he creado una hoja única de la guía del Capítulo 3 de ANSI/TPI 1, similar a una versión de CliffsNotes del estándar. Tenga en cuenta que se omiten detalles importantes; para una comprensión completa, consulte el estándar...

The news of trusses being built with newfangled plates was so well received that it raced across the country in the late 1950s. The first to take notice were homebuilders who built with stick framing, who then wanted to try trusses. The first to respond were lumberyards, who were well positioned...

We enjoyed a productive week at BCMC in Omaha, strengthening relationships and renewing our commitment to the truss industry, and we hope you can say the same! Timber Products Inspection (TP) returned with our popular ANSI/TPI 1 Chapter 3 challenge truss, designed to test participants’...

Enventek has once again set a new truss industry standard with the introduction of NEXPLATE at BCMC in Omaha last month. NEXPLATE is Enventek’s latest lean manufacturing solution, poised to revolutionize truss plate picking. [For all photos, See PDF or View in Full Issue.] This...