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Component Manufacturing dverti$ dverti $ er
Don’t Forget! You Saw it in the
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February 2021 #13259 Page #10
Sixty Years of Machines Part XV: Hex Heads
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“hex” descended upon the component saw business at BCMC in 1981. Fortunately, this hex turned out to be a good “spell,” one that quickened Joe Kannapell the search for a machine that could cut any piece. Speed Cut, Inc. introduced the Timbermill, a 6-bladed (or hex-headed) solution. The incumbents Clary and Idaco, and upstart DePauw, who offered only 4-bladed saws, were upstaged and quickly had to go back to the drawing board. The most vexing cutting issue then was the increased incidence of scissors trusses, which required 5 saw cuts. Some enterprising CMs, like the Shoffner plants, could cut them with DePauw saws as long as the butt cut was around ¼”. But larger butt cuts were increasingly common as vaulted trusses with energy heels (higher heels for insulation) or vaults beneath bastard (dual-pitched) hips proliferated. Their bottom chords had to be separated and man-handled onto a Metra-Cut Saw. Four-bladed saws constrained truss designers, who were able to “cut anything” with increasingly powerful software like On-Line Data’s Sketch Pad. But they were often chastised for sending pieces to the shop which couldn’t be easily cut. Angles less than ten degrees, scarf cuts more than 30 inches, and single piece bottom chords were verboten. The result was less-than-optimal designs, mis-cuts, and/or costly handwork. Speed Cut, Inc. was ideally situated in Corvallis, Oregon, the heart of the Northwestern timber industry. They had previously developed automated machinery to cut hip rafters. And they became aware that their Metra-Cut saw was considerably less productive than a component saw. They also had to understand what pieces it usually cut. With this knowledge, their prior cutting expertise, and their name recognition, Speed Cut was able to gain rapid acceptance of their first component saw. In the process, they popularized the acronym “PAE” for Pivot Angle Elevation, illustrated by the three vertical scales shown here. Later, these measurements were known simply as “centerlines.”
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