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