While admiring a Mass Timber building rising nearby, I wanted to find out if CMs can benefit from this business. Katerra apparently thinks so, first becoming a CM and later a CLT manufacturer. So far, the supply of CLT is limited – the Katerra plant is 2500 miles from this Virginia jobsite...

As I stood in the small office waiting for the saw deposit check, the fax machine began running. I was stirred by the bold headline on the unfurling document, “…Timbermill’s Advantages Over Easy Set ...” Then I watched large bullet points cascading out of the machine. At...

Countless outstanding individuals have built this industry. Sadly, two of them have recently passed away: Don Butcher, co-founder of Heart Truss & Engineering, and Craig Aufderhar, Sales Executive of Trussway. Please read more of their exemplary personal lives via the links below. But also,...

A “hex” descended upon the component saw business at BCMC in 1981. Fortunately, this hex turned out to be a good “spell,” one that quickened the search for a machine that could cut any piece. Speed Cut, Inc. introduced the Timbermill, a 6-bladed (or hex-headed) solution...

My advice: talk to a helpful human before you transition to a new PC or cell phone. And make sure they’ll be there when you begin changing. This will spare you the anguish I went through as I was moving from MiTek devices to my own. I had presumed that I could do this on my own as I had in...

Ten years after the Sanford Gantry stormed onto the scene, the DePauw Saw arrived without much fanfare. Their introductions said a lot about their inventors. Carroll Sanford was an ebullient architect, Art DePauw an unassuming machinist. If both men were alive today, they would relish seeing...

Retired now from MiTek (but not from this magazine), it is a fitting time to thank all of you I have been honored to serve. I was fortunate to have started about the time floor trusses were being introduced, and to have seen them revolutionize apartment building. In December, I observed four...

Even with laser projection and auto-jigging, assembly can still be expedited by good material handling and plating. The former can be optimized at reasonable expense, while to improve the latter will require a substantial investment. To calculate the potential impact, we can use data recorded in...

You probably need to get away from the truss business for a while, and now is the best time to plan for it. Travel has never been cheaper. Facilities have never been cleaner or less congested. And you can book holiday plans now with little risk – hotel rooms and plane tickets are largely...

Once auto-jigging enabled 4-minute truss setups, some thought we could go no further. Not so, said our Canadian compadres. Their claim was hard to fathom, since our last Benchmark Test results seemed unbeatable. But it was worth investigation, even if the plant involved was 2500 miles away. So,...