I’ve been covering the industry’s evolution toward robotics, but I’d like to stop for a minute and recall the days of corrugated fasteners. These clever clips proved themselves whenever trusses were flipped or ejected. Now, perhaps ironically, they still have a role to play even as robotics are adopted.
The perfect example is provided by True House, where their corrugated-fastened trusses are never flipped or ejected down flimsy-wheeled lifters. Instead, they’re kept flat as heavy-duty chain conveyors raise them out of the jigging, and they stay that way through the plating process. While True House’s conveyance and “post-plating” processes are a subset of the more complete Randek Auto Eye Truss System, they eliminate the most labor-intensive part of the truss assembly process. And the rest of the upstream fabrication process is untouched. [For all photos, See PDF or View in Full Issue.]
At the True House plant, an Alpine Linear Saw (ALS) cuts parts which are manually fed into Auto-Set jigging, per normal procedures. Assemblers then stitch the parts together using, in this example, four staples to hold the slider against the top chord, and 12 additional staples to secure this raised-heel-K-web joint. Upon completion of the stapling, and without waiting for a gantry, the truss is raised uniformly and smoothly powered onto a parallel outfeed conveyor.
Because the truss is not held in a jig during conveyance, it will likely enter the plating station at a different angle from when it was assembled. That’s where Auto Eye’s vision technology comes into play. It automatically detects the truss orientation as it passes under a covered hood, and the ingenious Randek software adjusts the plating plattens “on the fly.”
A unique feature of the Auto Eye is its ability to prevent over-embedment of plates by adjusting tonnage for plate size and lumber density. And by using a vertical press, Auto Eye’s joints have the high holding power like Trussmatic’s.
What has been most ground-breaking about all four U.S. robotic installations is that they compress run time. This reduces labor cost on every truss built, as contrasted with previous advances such as computerized saws and tables that compress mainly setup time. (Note the Ranger RS lumber retrieval system also compresses run time).
Even though our outlook for 2023 is cloudy, robotics continues its steady migration into truss manufacturing. Three viable systems are now building trusses in the U.S., but only Trussmatic has proven that a single console operator can control two totally automated build stations. The Randek Auto Eye plating has proven to be the best robotic add-on to an existing roof assembly system. And House of Design, having tackled both roof and floor assembly, is in the process of mastering the pre-plating process. Much more to follow…