Richard Pedde

The Story Behind JAX, The Wood Retriever

Richard Pedde

When I acquired the former Ryland Homes component plant, I bought automated saws but couldn’t find an automated way to feed all three of them. Like most component manufacturers, I needed to pick small numbers of boards for my linear saws’ orders and large numbers of boards for my...

#16304 Cover image
November 2024
Issue #16304
Page 82
Joe Kannapell

The Last Word: The Rise, Fall, and Rise of Big Truss Plants

Joe Kannapell

The way it was – In 1986, as Dick Rotto embarked on a nationwide expansion, he admonished his salesforce, “Trussway will never have another plant as big as our Houston location.” Rotto’s warning came at a time when there wasn’t enough business in the entire state of...

#16301 Cover image
August 2024
Issue #16301
Page 154
Joe Kannapell

Floor Truss Technology, Part VII: The Devil is in Those Details

Joe Kannapell

Building intricate floor truss details may bedevil a robot, but they provide the inherent advantage of floor trusses over I-joists. There are also things that floor trusses can do that I-joists cannot. And they facilitate the most efficient use of materials. Visiting an I-joist cut-off yard...

#15293 Cover image
December 2023
Issue #15293
Page 10
Joe Kannapell

The Last Word: The Concrete Truss Machine

Joe Kannapell

New inventions may fade away, but most provide valuable lessons, like the concrete truss machine. Not many of these were built, but they seemed to Cal Jureit to be the logical match for his new truss plate, and they set the course for all his future machines. Jureit had to have been...

#15293 Cover image
December 2023
Issue #15293
Page 134
Joe Kannapell

Floor Truss Technology, Part VI: The Last Round of Floor Machines

Joe Kannapell

Our contemporary floor machines were ready for the resurgence of demand that has followed the pandemic. These new models had many fascinating features, accumulated from the multiple iterations before them. They were more durable, they lessened labor, and they built a quality truss, embedding all...

#15292 Cover image
November 2023
Issue #15292
Page 10
Joe Kannapell

Floor Truss Technology, Part V: Current Machines

Joe Kannapell

Component manufacturers learned one very painful floor truss lesson in the 1970s that needed to be remedied in the 1980s – nightmare repairs can result from plates not being fully embedded. That predicament usually resulted from insufficient tonnage to fully press the larger plates found...

#15291 Cover image
October 2023
Issue #15291
Page 10
Joe Kannapell

Floor Truss Technology, Part IV: Second Generation Machinery

Joe Kannapell

Seeing floor trusses for the first time, Dick Rotto immediately pursued an order, even before he had a floor machine or the know-how to build floor trusses. He and his young crew at Trussway had many questions though, as did every CM taking on this intriguing new product. What kind of table...

#15290 Cover image
September 2023
Issue #15290
Page 10
Joe Kannapell

The Last Word: Truss Machinery Follows the Plates

Joe Kannapell

Throughout the 1950s, plate manufacturers kept busy improving their plate designs, while they paid scant attention to the machinery that CMs needed to embed them. But, in the 1960s, they began focusing heavily on machinery and laid the foundation for developments that would shape truss...

#15286 Cover image
May 2023
Issue #15286
Page 124
Wendy Boyd

The Spida Showcase of Products at BCMC

Wendy Boyd

Spida has put together the most wonderful range of machinery to see at BCMC 2022 — we’ll have an extensive showcase of products to ensure your production is streamlined and ready to face your bottle-necks head on! If you’re ready to become less dependent on your fluctuating...

#14278 Cover image
September 2022
Issue #14278
Page 19
Joe Kannapell

The Last Word: The Last Word on the Robotics Transition

Joe Kannapell

Robotics showed new promise for many CMs on May 17, ironically, by borrowing from the past 60 years of truss machinery. Attendees at SBCA’s Open Quarterly Meeting in Williamsburg, VA saw video of robots feeding truss parts into auto-jigging at the plant of their largest competitor,...

#14276 Cover image
July 2022
Issue #14276
Page 132
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