How fast should a wall panel line be? A lot faster than it takes to frame on site. Sure, if the framing and sheathing speed is the same as on site there are still savings in reducing overall build time and the accompanying finance and insurance costs. But, framing on site doesn’t require land, a building, or nearly as much equipment as a factory. Add in more freight costs and it’s clear that the factory needs to be much faster to pay for all of those overhead costs. I have seen many factories that have spent big dollars struggle to achieve 500 lnft/shift. These aren’t the droids they were looking for…
ROI improves by lowering CapEx or improving speed – preferably both. Speed not only lowers labor, it amortizes the land and buildings over a higher volume of production. Speed also reduces lead times and carrying costs by reducing the need to “get ahead” at the beginning of large projects to keep up with erecting panels on the site.
There are factories out there that can produce 1,500+ lnft per 7.5 hour shift of walls on a single line. To get those numbers, the cycle time on a 10 ft panel needs to be 3.0 minutes. Many panels, of course, are shorter than 10 ft and their cycle times need to be even faster.
Many accomplish this using manual processes. Framing extruders cannot keep up with this pace, especially with the concentration of studs on the first two levels of six-story buildings. It is the same for framing dollies – most have been ripped off the framing table because they are too slow. Some sheathing bridges can nail fairly quickly, but cycle times are often impacted by slow changeover times from panel to panel or time lost to replacing nail coils.
At AMT, we have reduced the upfront cost and increased speed through careful design of not only the nailing processes but also the changeover time between panels. If you want to get production numbers like 1,500 lnft or beyond per shift, reach out. We can work with you to design a line that will get you there. We can also add features and additional tooling to our equipment as your volume grows.