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Don’t Forget! You Saw it in the
Adverti$$er
May 2024 #16298 Page #114
Innovating from the Ground Up: Welcome to the Future! By Caleb Knudson, Product Engineering Manager
t Simpson Strong-Tie, Risk-Taking Innovation is central to our mission of helping people design and build safer, stronger structures. We’ve devoted a tremendous amount of effort and resources to thoughtfully cultivating a culture of innovation. And as Engineers, we’ve been armed with quite a toolbox of resources toward that end, including state-of-the-art testing laboratories, virtual modeling and simulation tools, 3D printing capabilities, old-fashioned engineering judgment, and last but certainly not least, the collective knowledge of hundreds of Simpson reps in the field.
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This framework has served us well as we set off to develop innovative products, processes and services. However, in my 18-plus years at Simpson, I’ve also come to realize that innovation is rarely characterized by a lightbulb moment, as depicted by Walter Isaacson in various biopics, but rather is facilitated when there is a robust process in place to bring the right people together at the right time to focus on the right problems. One of the first problems and subsequent innovation projects I worked on at Simpson was aimed at reducing the installed cost of top-flange I-joist hangers by eliminating joist nails altogether. At first glance, this undertaking seemed a bit derivative given that we’d recently introduced the face-mount IUS I-joist hanger with a snap-in seat feature. US Face-Mount I-Joist Hanger and IUS Installed
However, we quickly found out that when we didn’t have face nails providing lateral restraint for the hanger flanges, this project was anything but derivative. The I-joist needed to be able to be easily installed with a single foot stomp or press down. This meant that the hanger flanges would need to bow out and spring back to the original position without causing inelastic deformation to the hanger flanges or Strong-Grip™ seat prongs that might compromise the uplift capacity. This also needed to work for the full range of hanger width and height combinations, each featuring a unique seat stiffness. In addition to ease of installation and structural performance, we also wanted to ensure the joists remained firmly seated when in service and floor squeaks were minimized.
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