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Component Manufacturing dverti$ dverti $ er
Don’t Forget! You Saw it in the
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April 2021 #13261 Page #10
Sixty Years of Machines Part XVII: Automation Takes Hold
Joe Kannapell
T
he future of automation was on display at the 1988 BCMC, but few of us recognized it. Two leading truss plant owners did, however: Lenny Sylk of Shelter Systems and Dick Rotto of Trussway. Lenny’s purchase of the automated saw encouraged others to follow suit. Dick demurred on the automated jigging, like most of his peers. This surprised me because the auto-jigging looked much more conventional than the saw, and it was offered by an established vendor, Alpine Engineered Products. Contrarily, the Auto-Omni saw looked very unconventional, and was offered by a largely unknown entity, Engineering Services Company. However, if the automated saw lived up to its billing, it could eclipse the rise of the DePauw/Easy-Set manual saws. We needed to know more about the Auto-Omni, its unconventional inventor, Jerry Koskovich, and its early purchasers. And until this day, I’d hadn’t fully appreciated the untold story of the technology inside this machine. I first encountered Jerry when he was working in a totally different capacity: consulting with Engineered Building Components (EBCO) in Minneapolis as an outside PE. Like me, he is a Civil, not a Mechanical, Engineer, schooled on static structures, not moving machines. But from the engineering work he did for truss plants, he gained a firsthand understanding of their cutting challenges, and their need for a more versatile saw. He went to work building several manual component saws. Then in 1984, he partnered with a local machine shop to incorporate robotic arms and an innovative lumber clamping system on the saw. Jerry then tapped his CM contacts and found an ideal partner close-at-hand: Nick Linsmayer, owner of Villaume Industries. Nick was positioning his 100+ year old family business as a technological leader. He sanctioned Jerry’s onsite development work over several years and, by 1987, began to reap the benefits. (Mr. Linsmayer recently sold Villaume to US LBM).
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