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Don’t Forget! You Saw it in the
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December 2022 #14281 Page #35
Why Do I Need the Software Polygons? By Glenn Traylor
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hen completing an in-house inspection, a critical plate inspection is required for each truss inspected. This requirement is from ANSI/TPI 1–2014. Specifically, per section 3.7.1:
No less than one critical joint per Truss selected for inspection, on average across all operational set-up locations at the Truss manufacturing facility, shall be inspected. Critical joints have a joint stress index (JSI), as defined in Section 8.11.3, greater than or equal to 0.80. For the considerations needed when selecting which joints to inspect, see my May 2019 article, How Do I Choose Which Plates for a Critical Plate Inspection?. After those decisions are made, it’s very important to have the proper paperwork or digital information available to complete the critical plate inspection. When doing the plate placement method (PPM) critical plate inspection, there are three different elements that need to be assessed and recorded for each face of the truss for each critical plate inspection: 1. Angulation of the connector plate, 2. Defects in the plated area, and 3. The location of the center of the connector in relation to the “polygon.” Recently, at several locations using various plate suppliers, I witnessed clients using the softwaregenerated PPM paperwork without the polygon information. Figure 1 shows an example of PPM paperwork generated without a polygon. Because the software was not generating the polygon, the in-house inspector was assuming the plate could not deviate from the center shown. In each plant, we investigated why. The answer in each situation was due to settings within the software. For all major plate manufacturers, several switches must be “on” to generate the information. Figure 2 shows the setting within the Alpine software. Continued next page
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