The long overdue rebirth of domestic wall panel technology is finally upon us, as U.S. manufacturers have begun to innovate. For the last 30 years, they ceded the upper end of the market to the Europeans, and focused on manual framing and sheathing solutions. For the last 10 years, they have suffered much more than their truss counterparts through the Great Recession. To their benefit, however, during that same period, many of the European panel systems in the U.S. were scrapped. Even still, these American panel equipment manufacturers would have disappeared had they not been sustained by their non-housing related machinery businesses.
These challenges have left room for vast improvement, as evidenced by a tour through the largest domestic panel plant. Though they start by automatically marking plates with stud and junction locations, the rest of their plant isn’t fundamentally different than the plant where the late Tommy Woods worked 30+ years ago. They manually nail plates to studs and also sheathing to top and bottom plates. They measure sheathing with a tape and cut it on a vertical panel saw. They manually position a conventional 20+ tool sheathing bridge and ‘hope’ to engage the studs beneath. They scissor lift the panels into stacks. And they endure the substantial risks of injury and mechanical breakdowns.
Now domestic suppliers have the opportunity to mitigate risks and fill the gap between their legacy products and imported equipment. They are presently attacking the lower end of this spread, extending their proven products, as none have the wherewithal to approach the massive Blueprint Robotics initiative in Baltimore (see “German Invasion” in February 2017’s Component Advertiser). They will prosper if their equipment produces better panels that meet the builders’ demanding requirements. In many markets, builders will reject panels with overdriven fasteners, shiners (nails that miss studs), or missing fasteners. The risk of rejection is heightened by the migration away from stapling Thermo-Ply to nailing OSB.
The first evidence of progress is found in the single-tool sheathing bridge, which is now operating successfully in more than a dozen plants. On first glance, one tool can’t possibly match 2 dozen tools operating on a conventional bridge. However, the increased “up-time” of the simpler mechanism yields comparable productivity. The much improved alignment and consistent embedment of fasteners minimizes field repair calls. A single tool can be set at opposing angles when nailing either side of a seam that is backed by a single stud. In summary, the improved accuracy of a single tool on a wall panel line yields fabrication dividends comparable to those given by a single-bladed saw on a truss line.
A further advance addresses sheathing cutting, automating one of the most tedious and laborious tasks in the plant. A “twin-axis” saw downloads cutting data, minimizes measurement errors, and delivers more accurate cuts and optimization. The enclosed saw chamber enables much improved dust collection and better compliance with OHSA dust regulations, especially when cutting fiberglass-mat (DensGlass) sheathing.
The most promising development centralizes all lumber cutting, leveraging the full power of the linear saw. All materials for headers, cripples, raked wall studs, angled plates, etc. are fed through a single saw with a single operator/stacker. Plates are automatically marked with stud marks, junction locations, and panel ID’s; on up to 3 faces. The result is a panel assembly area free of all chop saws, up-cut saws, pull-saws, and their attendant risk. All lumber is sourced from outside the production area. Dust collection is vastly improved.
While these small steps in automation will improve production, will wall panel sales expand beyond current market niches? Will their growth entice truss-only shops to provide whole-house solutions, given that they already own much of the framing model? As will be shown subsequently, these increasingly detailed, engineered assemblies are fully as complex as trusses, and deserving of factory fabrication.
Next Month:
Wall Panel Design Primer