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June 2021 #13263 Page #10
Sixty Years of Machines Part XIX: Automation Battles
n automation battle was brewing in the late 1980s, but the first skirmish wasn’t over machinery. It was over software. Software that would minimize more than just the manual labor, but also the “thinking” done by machine operators. The time finally arrived when, after decades of development, truss cutting lists had become “dead on” accurate, even for the most complex pieces. In tandem, after decades of mechanical engineering, computer-like machine controllers (PLCs) were able to accurately run motors and move mechanisms. The union of truss software and PLCs would lead to a whole different generation of linear saws, but not until component saws paved the way.
Joe Kannapell
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In the 1990s, most CMs had to retain skilled saw operators to run their fully powered component saws. Though sawyers no longer had to hand-crank carriages and man-handle lumber, they still had to read a printed cutting list and “know” which one of the five blades to adjust. For scissors heels setups, they had to enter 9 different angle and centerline (PAE) settings. This took several minutes to complete. To lessen the process, boards with the same cuts could be batched together. But this created additional sorting labor. As a result, saws were often the bottleneck in production until Koskovich came along. Jerry Koskovich’s innovation was two-fold. He eliminated not just the sawyer’s manual entry of cutting parameters, but also the sawyer’s painstaking thought process. To accomplish this, he “borrowed” from the machine tool industry the Programmable Logic Control (PLC) technology. Since a PLC is a controller of motors and mechanisms, and not a computer, Jerry had to rely on the truss design software to compute the blade assignments and send all the required cutting data to the Omni in a specific format (referred to as the “OMN” after its file extension). In the process he created a breakthrough machine, but in the process, he also showed software vendors how to compete with him.
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