Driven by the dire shortage of housing entering the 1950s, Levittown sparked a fervor for homes to be built like cars on assembly lines. Fortunately, there was a crop of returning veterans ready to oblige, whether by building whole houses or just parts of houses. William Levett delved into modular production and Jim Price tackled both modular and mobile homes, while both also grew their traditional product lines (see last month’s Wall Panel Technology Prequel: Birth of the Component Industry). All of this production, as well as that of their peers, created a drive for panelization which spilled over to the plate and machinery companies, and finally to component manufacturers, though with mixed results. [For all images, See PDF or View in Full Issue.]
Cal Jureit, following the vision he embodied in the name he chose for his company, Automated Building Components, followed Levitt to the hotbed of growth in Southern California. In 1964, he set up “the largest in the world” component plant and located it within a 35-mile radius of the bulk of housing starts. One of his open-air buildings was to be devoted to wall panel production, but there is little evidence in this 1965 aerial photo, likely because California framers were and are the most formidable stick-frame force in the country.
Karl The Losen, then and now the proprietor of Ridgway Roof Truss, ventured into the wall panel business to supply a nearby apartment job in Gainesville, Florida. At the time, it seemed that installing the huge banks of casement windows would be much more efficient to do in his plant. This resulted in the two-story balloon-framed assemblies highlighted here, which were tough to man-handle in the plant, and just as awkward to install in the field. This experience pointed out the challenge of doing “one-off” panel work that, to this day, few have mastered. A second challenge for Karl was the lack of a sufficient volume of repetitive work in his town of less than 100,000, prompting him to focus on trusses ever since.
Cal Jureit continued to pursue his vision for componentization, and he found a kindred spirit in Joe Cotton, a homebuilder who was running his own truss and wall panel facility in Charlottesville, Virginia. Cotton’s early advocacy of computerized panel design complemented Jureit’s zeal for computerized truss design, leading Jureit to buy Cotton’s 34-acre operation, naming it Automated Structures. Shortly after the purchase, Jureit created a new division called ABCom Systems, “to initially serve this growing segment of the component field.” He retained Cotton and charged him with leadership of ABCom’s Virginia office. Cotton was able to quickly engage programming resources from nearby University of Virginia to create the first wall panel design program. Jureit later described the capabilities of their work, called AutoPan, “… which designs all of the wall panels for any frame structure by means of a timesharing computer…and the output consists of full costing, a bill of materials, cutting bill, full fabrication instructions, and a plot of the floor plan. The fabricator prepares the input in roughly a half hour.” That AutoPan predated AutoTruss, the real backbone of ABCom’s software, must have been due to the fact that AutoPan was mainly a framing application, without the nuances of design calculations. Subsequently, Cotton released the first cutting program for wall panel parts, called AutoCut, decades ahead of any comparable program.
Although several CMs ventured into panelization in the 1960s, none were as well positioned as builders who had sufficient repetitive work. The most aggressive advocates were prefabricated home builders such as National Homes and select tract builders such as Ryan Homes (now NVR). National Homes was one of the first to seek fabrication equipment, looking to Triad in Alda, Nebraska from whom they had purchased window frame machines. Ryan Homes initially went to their roof equipment supplier, Hydro-Air, and later also relied heavily on Triad. Entering the 1970s, panel equipment sales were jump-started as Paslode had perfected the first reliable pneumatic nail guns which made a multi-tool bridge practical.
With the promise of software, the availability of equipment, and the unprecedented demand for housing, the industry seemed poised for a tremendous expansion of wall panel technology as it entered the 1970s.
Next Month:
Panel Equipment Proliferates
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