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Component Manufacturing dverti$ dverti $ er
Don’t Forget! You Saw it in the
Adverti$$er
September 2023 #15290 Page #10
Floor Truss Technology, Part IV: Second Generation Machinery eeing floor trusses for the first time, Dick Rotto immediately pursued an order, even before he had a floor machine or the know-how to build floor By Joe Kannapell trusses. He and his young crew at Trussway had many questions though, as did every CM taking on this intriguing new product. What kind of table would be optimal, the Truswal four-station model or the more compact one- or two-station machines that were coming onto the market? Would they select a vertical press or a roller? Decisions like these would be crucial in pursuing this business-doubling opportunity.
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Watching a 50-foot truss being rolled in less than a minute convinced Rotto and many of his peers to select a roller, even though their supplier didn’t have a roller plate. Stopping and starting a vertical press on triple the number of joints as a roof truss was just too time-consuming. Trussway looked to Clary, just a few hours away, perhaps because of their well-regarded component saws, and that required using Clary plates for floor trusses, while maintaining a separate inventory of Gang-Nail plates for roof trusses. Clary’s Roll-A-Span was first offered with a single assembly zone, in which the top face of the truss was plated, then it was flipped in place, and the opposite face was plated. Lines of bolt holes were provided at regular intervals to facilitate depth and camber adjustments. This kick-leg, V-wheel driven machine can fit neatly against a wall as shown here, and its durability has been affirmed, as this 40-year-old machine was still running recently at Dominion Components in Virginia. However, its owner, Al Smith, paid meticulous attention to maintaining its kick legs, and took the time to redrill and tap bolt holes when they had been stripped. Later, Clary offered a two-assembly-zone machine in which the truss was flipped across the table like current machines. On either machine, installation was a challenge, as Mark Rolf recalled when his Trussway design team had to labor over a long weekend hammer-drilling and bolting down 2 x 50 feet of V-track and a dozen steel plates for the kick legs.
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