This year’s Show, some 45 years after my first, brought some amazing revelations. The most awesome sight was an actual working truss plant on the Show floor. The most intriguing experience was being transported inside a robotic plant. And, the most welcome sounds were good economic...

A current trend in our industry is that the component manufacturers are being advised that one should have a fully automated lumber retrieval system linked to an automated linear saw that pushes the cut lumber directly to the assembly table with an auto puck system. This type of setup is often...

The housing industry has been begging for workers going on a decade now. The American citizen work force is not answering the call. Consequently, housing construction has become completely dependent on undocumented workers. Meanwhile, Artificial Intelligence and Robotics technology are...

The quickening of innovation will be on display at BCMC this month, and, undoubtedly, so will be the uptake. Suppliers use this platform to launch new products, sometimes rather humbly. Art DePauw sold his prototype “automated” saw to two industry giants, Charlie Barnes and Dave...

This year’s BCMC is going to be unparalleled to any other trade show for Square 1 Design & Manufacture Inc. With over 5,000 square feet of floor space, we have decided to bring the manufacturing to you. LIVE WALL PANEL MANUFACTURING ON THE SHOW FLOOR! The Spida Wall Panel Extruder will...

What is driving the quest for automation besides the obvious? Surely it is not our preoccupation with the past, because that would recall the recent near-depression, and painful past calamities. Rather it is prospection, looking ahead, that explains much of our behavior, according to...

Automation is advancing around the world, but will it yield the quantum leap promised? And how big a margin will it provide over conventional processes? Let’s first assess how various systems affect non-direct-labor inputs to the production process. Later we’ll balance these against...

What future does the Blueprint Robotics factory in Baltimore portend for housing construction? This huge German plant certainly rivals Pulte’s former facility in the same market (shuttered in 2008). And it may even eclipse the robotics/automation going forward in multiple truss plants IF...

A book I read in 2015, “Rise of the Robots,” by Martin Ford, talked about the threat many people see that robots present to the employment marketplace. At the time, I was working with several different equipment manufacturers and clients on their automated/robotic equipment...

The path of factory innovation is leading us to automated systems rather than true robotics. Though industrial robotics has been used for 30 years in our industry, it has served mainly as a forerunner to later systems. Its earliest commercialization, the robotic arms of the Koskovich component...