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Component Manufacturing dverti$ dverti $ er
Don’t Forget! You Saw it in the
Adverti$$er
February 2024 #16295 Page #136
The Last Word Floor Machine Fiascos efore leaving the subject of floor trusses, two machines deserve special attention, the Tiger Cat and the Structur-Span. Both included features that were way ahead of their 1970s provenance and both were markedly Joe Kannapell, P.E. faster than even present-day machines. Both plated the truss with a single pass, and both powered trusses out of their jigs. But these machines also had memorable challenges that I encountered as a supplier, and in two truss plants where I worked.
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The Tiger Cat from Hydro-Air, MiTek’s predecessor company, promised to emulate the success of their record-setting Glide-Away roof machine, upon which it was based. The Tiger Cat included automated pressing, not markedly different from Gang-Nail’s Press-O-Matic which had debuted a few years earlier. Initial feedback was that the machine was too fast. Later I went to the plant to find out why. But first, I walked through an apartment job being framed with a huge quantity of trusses produced by the Tiger Cat. Then at the plant, I saw two men on opposite sides of the narrow table, laying down plates on a truss in a jig, moving smartly just ahead of the automated press head. Shortly after completing the pressing, the truss was automatically ejected, and the process reinitiated. Since the truss didn’t have to be flipped and back plated, the cycle time was markedly reduced, and it worked with two rather than three operators. But unfortunately, the Tiger Cat’s multiple mechanisms needed sophisticated controls that were not yet available. And this worthy concept came to an ignominious end when one of the heads ran off the end of its track and would have run into a crew member if it hadn’t been halted by a snapped hydraulic hose.
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