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Component Manufacturing dverti$ dverti $ er
Don’t Forget! You Saw it in the
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June 2023 #15287 Page #10
Floor Truss Technology, Part I: Parallel Chord Trusses
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loor trusses have been golden for the component industry for over half a century, and their origin is worth recounting and celebrating. Because of their flexibility and utility, wood trusses dominate apartment construction and have taken it up to 5 stories. Getting there, however, has required the collective minds of CMs and plate manufacturers over these years, developing innovative details that expedited construction and lowered costs. And as robotic manufacturing technology comes on stream, they’ll be even more competitive.
By Joe Kannapell
The predecessor to the wood-web floor truss was the steel-webbed TJL, developed by Art Troutner and Harold “Red” Thomas who formed Trus Joist in 1960. TJLs featured tubular metal webs connected to chords by steel pins. Their use spread quickly in the wood-friendly Northwest, and, as Trus Joist made deals with nationally franchised entities, they gradually made their way across the U.S. Trus Joist heavily promoted the TJL to architects and engineers through their highly effective representatives across the country, like Bruce Gordon, who later established Structural Systems in Maryland, and Steve Jones, who is now the proprietor of Structural Technologies in Virginia. Another steel-webbed truss was introduced in 1968, by the inventive Carol Sanford, which provided CMs the opportunity to enter the business with minimal investment. Sanford’s innovation took advantage of the superior strength of steel in tension and incorporated it into a structure compatible with wood construction. His tension web was also easy to manufacture, since its flat ends did not contain teeth but only a series of holes that would receive the teeth of a conventional truss plate. His design also included steel reinforcement straps on both top and bottom chords to enhance their strength. These straps were essentially long truss plates that would be stacked in multiple layers as forces dictated: as shown here, none in the first panel, one in the second panel, two in the third panel, and three in the center panels.
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