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, Builders FirstSource. And they heard BFS leaders Greg Griggs and Scott Schulte embrace robotics, and their supplier, Chad Svedin of House of Design LLC (HoD), state in an understated tone that, “We don’t know trusses, but we know robotics.” In fact, HoD, like its peers, has learned a lot about trusses, and are taking much of our existing technology to the next level.
These developments have been a long time in coming, but CMs’ interest seemed to peak in 2008, at the height of the housing boom. Both TCT Automation, based in Florida, and Randek, based in Sweden, introduced highly automated roof truss systems. The Randek Auto-Eye first appeared on these pages in an October 2014 ad highlighting its most advanced feature, its automated plating, aided by vision technology that can correct for lumber imperfections. Despite the potential of these systems, both were hindered by the great recession, and neither was in use in the U.S. until 2017, when Barry Dixon of True House installed the Randek in Crescent City, Florida. By then, TCT had turned its main attention to advancing its linear saw.
Over the last few years, CMs have pursued this technology actively, but cautiously, as was recently discussed in SBCA’s Podcast featuring Barry Dixon and B J Louws. And now Louws, BFS, and even Trussway are installing their first robotic roof systems. Interestingly, the actual truss assembly equipment that they will employ has conventional aspects, with auto-puck tables, gantry heads, and finish rollers, but with robots in place of people. The three Trussmatic systems in the U.S. use a novel approach, with a vertically oriented table, magnetic jigging, and totally unattended operation.
The biggest breakthrough in all four robotic roof truss offerings is the automation of plating, which mitigates the main bottleneck in the truss assembly process. Both the Randek and TCT created a separate workstation for plating, downstream from assembly, but at the cost of an additional process, namely, the stapling of truss parts on the jig table. The HoD and the Trussmatic machines do most of the plating while the truss is in the jig table. HoD replicated with robotics the system that Trussway had perfected on its Mark V tables over 40 years ago, namely, pre-plating the top face of the chords, and then flipping them over and into the jig. Trussmatic applies both top and bottom plates using C-Clamp-like jaws on the robotic arms, much like Shelter Systems has done manually with its vintage Mono-Press system. [For comparison table, See PDF or View in Full Issue.]
Greg Griggs, BFS’s SVP of Manufacturing, ended the video shown in Williamsburg with a resolution, “…our hope is that after seeing the success we’re going to invest further in automation at our plants across the country.” Indeed, just one month later, on June 16, HOD announced “that BFS has placed an order for eight additional robotic truss systems: four roof truss systems and four open-web floor truss systems.” While CMs may question whether the robotics push will be sustained through the next downturn, 84 Lumber’s VP of Manufacturing, Ken Kucera, suggests that the answer is to invest wisely, to be able “to stay the course through slower times.”