2017 International Forest Industries Magazines April May 2017 | Page 40

LUMBER PROCESSING SCANNING & OPTIMISATION – USNR USNR Carriage Optimisation: pairing man and machine A log is loaded and awaits processing Building throughput, recovery and satisfaction I n 2012 Kiwi Timber Protection (KTP) of Whangarei, New Zealand purchased the assets of a closed sawmill in Kerikeri, NZ, and reopened the site as Waipapa Pine. Today, the operation consists of a sawmill, continuous dry kilns, and timber stacking equipment. The mill’s primary product is high grade framing timber for the new house construction market on the North Island, with some export to the Pacific Islands. The facility currently processes Radiata Pine with a single-shift processing capacity of 130,000 t/y of logs. Problems with the old sawline Visit us on Stand 1537 The company’s headrig carriage, primary breakdown line was installed by the previous owner of the site. The carriage was a fully- manual operation; the operator was 100% responsible to decide what yield to target out of each log. Three years ago, the mill installed a slabber on the line. Although it delivered good production results, mill management EXPAND identified that ED FOR 20 manually determining the cuts 17! to make with the slabber added significant time to the process 38 International Forest Industries | APRIL / MAY 2017 Waipapa Pine chose both front and backside LASAR2 scanning for their mill. Using front and backside scanning, a scan image can be created that profiles 75% of a log’s circumference. (The frontside sensor is shown, circled in red) of breaking down a log. With the primary goal to speed up the line, the mill decided to invest in optimization. “We understood that optimization could provide additional benefits, but our main target was to increase production