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Component Manufacturing dverti$ dverti $ er
Don’t Forget! You Saw it in the
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January 2025 #17306 Page #46
The Art of a Lumber PickLine
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Edmond Lim, P.Eng. LimTek Solutions Inc.
f course, if you’re starting a truss plant from the ground up, it’s a snap to include an Enventek Lumber PickLine in your plans. The real beauty of the Lumber PickLine, however, is that it can be easily configured for existing truss plants – whether inside the plant or outside in the yard. Greenfield or existing truss plant, at the end of the shift, it is all about picking lumber to better organize cut lumber in front of the truss build tables – Feed the Beast!
Sometimes, adding a Lumber PickLine to a plant is very easy because we can utilize existing driveways and well-traveled forklift paths. It does not always have to be an extreme plant makeover, however, this too can be relatively easy and the productivity gains are substantial and well worth the effort. For an example of that, please see my article from last May, “An Extreme Plant Makeover in Pictures.” Interestingly, all of the greenfield truss plants that I have had the pleasure of outfitting with PickLines also decided to anchor their truss production with the wood processing efficiency of the fully loaded RetroC with SpeedCatch auto-fill carts. For greenfield truss plants, starting with a PickLine and the fully loaded RetroC provides a state-of-the-art foundation for efficient truss production with scalability as additional PickLines can be added to feed future saws from the same bunks of lumber. For examples of this, see “A Lumber PickLine Buys Time” and “Feed Any Component Saw with a Lumber PickLine.” Shown in the photos is a recent greenfield truss plant that had in their start-up budget a 24 ft wide x 40 ft long concrete pad under the SmartConveyors and a 16 ft wide x 140 ft long concrete pad under the PickLine trough. If there was no budget left for concrete, the SmartConveyors and PickLine trough could have been placed on the yard gravel.
This greenfield truss plant poured the minimum 8 ft wide concrete pad for the entire PickLine length, which provides a 2 ft sidewalk on either side of the PickLine trough that can be readily shoveled by hand or by snow blower. Plus, they saved money by placing the SmartConveyor legs onto railway ties. Continued next page
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