Adding the last links to the chain of material handling – bunk-to-saw and saw-to-table – is intricately executed by Hundegger at Sunpro’s major expansion in St. George, Utah – and it’s cool! Yes, here in the northeastern-most part of the Mojave Desert, the Clyde Companies have built a facility worth working in. This plant has joined the burgeoning ranks of the wider and larger truss plants that I began discussing in The Last Word last month, “The Rise, Fall, and Rise of Big Truss Plants.” While that article focuses on saw-to-table material handling, this one looks more closely at the entire bunk-to-table handling process.
Hundegger has refashioned its heavy timber handling technology to perform the easier task of 2x lumber processing, centered on its TURBO-Drive saw. The saw’s infeed is synchronized with Acer’s RangerRS and the outfeed with the Hundegger delivery system. On both ends, the implementation is feature-rich, taking into account the capability to assemble and cut a stack of four boards, while separating them to feed an assembly line truss-by-truss. And, in the process, the workflow and optimization is controlled by Hundegger’s CAMBIUM® CCM software, which also monitors the inventory of Acer’s lumber carts. [For all images, See PDF or View in Full Issue.]
Sunpro takes advantage of RangerRS’s full range of options to feed the Hundegger most efficiently. On two of their three lines, the Hundegger is positioned in the center of the array of lumber bunks (Optional Center Feed) shortening delivery time to the saw. All three lines have two independent picking heads (Optional Dual Delivery) which also expedite delivery time. And upon arrival at the saw infeed, boards are crowned (Standard Crown Orientation), and up to four boards may be stacked (Optional Stacking). On the exit end of the Hundegger is an ingenious unstacking and separating table, that divides cut parts truss by truss, and automatically sends them down a conveyor to an infeed separating conveyor. These extensive features ensure that the Hundegger is operating with maximum efficiency.
Also increasing the efficiency of the plant is the way Sunpro has protected both machinery and people from the environmental extremes in St. George. During July, the average high temperature is 102°, although at noon on July 8 when I visited, the outside temperature topped 106°. Yet, I never felt warm in the plant due to the extensive measures taken, the most impressive of which was the provision of rooftop evaporative coolers. Often called swamp coolers, they work in arid climates by passing outdoor air over water-soaked filters, evaporating the water and absorbing heat from the air, thereby cooling it. In St. George, like most desert cities, the humidity is very low on the hottest days when cooling is needed most. To deliver the cooler air to the plant floor, large high-volume low-speed fans are spread across the ceiling. This works well because the Sunpro structure itself is a high bay, Class A building, well insulated and totally enclosed when overhead doors are closed. A secondary benefit of the enclosure is to eliminate intrusion by airborne particulates (sand), which are driven by wind gusts that exceed 20 mph on most days in St. George. (If we had this building when I worked in Phoenix, we could have transferred workers from our Chicago plant, which Don Hershey was never able to do successfully).
Sunpro is to be commended for their unprecedented investment in the desert truss plant of the future, which takes material handling to the next level. As I mentioned last month, their 5-bin Hundegger Ejection Cross Conveyor system serves a 100 ft long truss line. Accommodating this system requires a great deal of floor space, and Sunpro’s three truss lines are housed in 300 ft wide building.
Even so, the Sunpro model is not limited to the desert, and their bunk-to-table configuration is applicable to any market, as is evidenced by Clayton Homes in Tennessee, Drexel Building Supply and Automated Products in Wisconsin, BFS in Texas, and many more to come.