Seeing floor trusses for the first time, Dick Rotto immediately pursued an order, even before he had a floor machine or the know-how to build floor trusses. He and his young crew at Trussway had many questions though, as did every CM taking on this intriguing new product. What kind of table would be optimal, the Truswal four-station model or the more compact one- or two-station machines that were coming onto the market? Would they select a vertical press or a roller? Decisions like these would be crucial in pursuing this business-doubling opportunity. [For all photos, See PDF or View in Full Issue.]
Watching a 50-foot truss being rolled in less than a minute convinced Rotto and many of his peers to select a roller, even though their supplier didn’t have a roller plate. Stopping and starting a vertical press on triple the number of joints as a roof truss was just too time-consuming. Trussway looked to Clary, just a few hours away, perhaps because of their well-regarded component saws, and that required using Clary plates for floor trusses, while maintaining a separate inventory of Gang-Nail plates for roof trusses. Clary’s Roll-A-Span was first offered with a single assembly zone, in which the top face of the truss was plated, then it was flipped in place, and the opposite face was plated. Lines of bolt holes were provided at regular intervals to facilitate depth and camber adjustments. This kick-leg, V-wheel driven machine can fit neatly against a wall as shown in the photo, and its durability has been affirmed, as this 40-year-old machine was still running recently at Dominion Components in Virginia. However, its owner, Al Smith, paid meticulous attention to maintaining its kick legs, and took the time to redrill and tap bolt holes when they had been stripped. Later, Clary offered a two-assembly-zone machine in which the truss was flipped across the table like current machines. On either machine, installation was a challenge, as Mark Rolf recalled when his Trussway design team had to labor over a long weekend hammer-drilling and bolting down 2 x 50 feet of V-track and a dozen steel plates for the kick legs.
The word must have gone out that CMs were willing to switch plate suppliers to get into the floor business, because new machines were rushed to market by the long-tooth plate manufacturers. One of these offerings was the Hydro-Air Beaver, which countered the faster speed of rollers with an array of advantages. Installation was a breeze, as the machine and its overhead plate rack clear-spanned its 42-foot length, foreshadowing the design of future tables. Changing depth was greatly simplified by the provision of easily adjustable, extendable jigging. And splicing on the table eliminated the extra handling required with a separate splicing operation.
About the same time, Alpine introduced its System 42 Fabricator, which featured the same clear span design and a vertical pressing gantry. Shelter Systems was an early adopter of both this machine and the Beaver.
Entering the 1980s, a de facto standard had been established. Machines would be 40-foot long with two setups, capable of building 12” to 24” depth trusses, and trusses would be plated on one side and flipped over to be plated on the opposite side. Most machines featured two assembly zones, and the market was divided between roller and press applications. And while the design of floor truss machines in the next decades would continue along this path, some innovative features and variants would arise that greatly enhanced productivity.
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The Current Generation of Machines
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