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Don’t Forget! You Saw it in the
Adverti$$er
November 2024 #16304 Page #82
The Story Behind JAX, The Wood Retriever By Richard Pedde
W
hen I acquired the former Ryland Homes component plant, I bought automated saws but couldn’t find an automated way to feed all three of them. Like most component manufacturers, I needed to pick small numbers of boards for my linear saws’ orders and large numbers of boards for my component saw’s orders. So, I looked outside the component industry to find a way to feed multiple saws.
A New Type of Gantry Of the many automated storage and retrieval systems (ASRS) available, the best solution appeared to be Sage Automation’s gantry system. Sage’s systems are built in Texas and have been deployed to more than 500 plants in a wide variety of applications. They work like an automated version of a roof truss gantry and, most importantly, Sage was willing to work closely with me and my team to develop tools to pick up sticks of wood, especially crooked Southern Pine lumber. The Sage gantry could fit in a space of any length, and its width could be varied too. I chose to extend the line nearly all the way across my 200 ft. wide building. That way, I could store a large number of bunks of lumber behind it, against the back wall of the building, and lessen the distance from their storage location to their ultimate slot beneath the gantry. For the width, I wanted the JAX gantry to span to accommodate 20 ft. lumber lengths. Then, I turned my attention to the tool that would pick up boards.
Designing the Pick-up Tool As attested by plywood, OSB, and LVL mills, vacuum pick-up technology is best suited for this general task, but its execution is crucial. I was adamant that this system accommodate any board that could be used in a truss, from a bowed 2x4x20 ft. board to a cupped 1.5x16x20 ft. LVL chord. After much testing, it was determined that at least four picking heads would be needed along the length of boards, and several more across the width of wider members. So with those parameters established, the final design depended on the number of boards that would need to be picked up at one time.
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