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Component Manufacturing dverti$er
Don’t Forget! You Saw it in the
April 2020 #12249 Page #10
Adverti$er
Sixty Years of Machines: Part V: The Gantry Gains Ground Joe Kannapell - P.E. Senior VP, MiTek USA www.mitek-us.com
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he roller gantry had two major obstacles to clear in the 1970s, both erected by its inventor, Carroll Sanford. Both were delineated in hard-to-evade U.S. Patents. The first was on the machine itself and the second was on the connector plate that it required. The simplicity of the gantry machine nearly precluded alternate designs. For this reason, the bulk of our industry bought hydraulic presses during this decade and used a longer toothed connector that worked well with them. But since we truss plate suppliers make more money on plates than machinery, we were determined to develop a plate that would work with the roller gantry. Sanford’s connector plate designs don’t look effective, but his patent claims surely were. Yet a few companies were able to launch roller plates (shown on the next page), but without much fanfare. The rightmost candidate, by saw maker Clary Corporation, gained the most traction in the marketplace, and its symmetrical configuration pleased our engineers. However, to differentiate our plate and improve its performance, we added teeth to their circular clusters. By chance, at this juncture in 1970, I came on the scene as a bit player, testing our enhanced version of the Clary plate. Unfortunately, the values I obtained were marginal even when we pressed the plates hydraulically but were below par when we embedded them with a 16” roller. While I continued to test other prototypes, the housing recession engulfed our industry in 1973, and we abandoned the project.
1963 Sanford Patent
1958 Sanford Patent
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