“ We sent over several batches of our Shop boards to USNR’ s facility at Eugene, Oregon, and they tested it. What they were showing me initially was pretty impressive.”
The edger operator reviews the edge solutions provided by the BioVision optimization system.
edger and the trimmer. Although Rodney has a lot of history with USNR and its products he did look at other sawmill grade scanning products available, but was most comfortable staying with USNR.“ I did look at other systems, but USNR was the most confident in their process, and they really tackled what I was looking to achieve for grade on Shop products.” He explained that grading for Shop products is a lot different from grading for dimension lumber. With Shop products the system is looking for all the clear spacing between the knots, with no consideration for the sizing of the knots.“ We sent over several batches of our Shop boards to USNR’ s facility at
Eugene, Oregon, and they tested it. What they were showing me initially was pretty impressive.”
The new supply
The new supply consists of a scanner transfer and edger table feeding an existing 5-saw Schurman edger, and a close-coupled shifting picker outfeed. A new scan frame features the BioLuma 2900LV sensors with integrated HD laser profiling and HD color vision capabilities, with grade classification via the BioVision sawmill grade optimization system. The PLC system was upgraded to the ControlLogix platform with RMC150 motion control. A MillTrak camera controls the flow at the edger infeed.
Of the new supply, Rodney said,“ The new 42” feed table has 3” skew on both sides to be able to handle 48” pieces, which we get off the big pine logs. The MillTrak system at the infeed is working really, really well. The edger was short coupled on the outfeed and USNR came up with a great design there.”
While the new system hasn’ t reduced labor, Rodney says that wasn’ t what it was intended to do.“ We knew we weren’ t going to reduce our labor cost,
The new edger table precisely positions each piece ahead of the existing 5-saw edger.
but we were going to gain on grade, scale recovery and increase production.” In the process throughput has improved dramatically.“ The edger system was a bottleneck because it was a manual system; it took the operator some time handling those big 48” pieces and positioning them to try to get the grade out. He would sometimes back up the two headrigs so they would have to slow down and wait for him to play catch up. Now the two double-cuts can run full speed and the edger line can handle additional production from the overhead.”
Optimization challenges
Don Reeder, USNR software engineer, did much of the programming work to meet the mill’ s criteria based on the Western Wood Products Association( WWPA) grading agency rules. Don commented,“ This was the first time we have done a MillExpert random width edger with vision scanning. We knew
The MillExpert BioVision edger interface was customized for the Evergreen Forest Products’ requirements based on WWPA Shop and Moulding criteria.
ISSUE 3- 2013 | Millwide INSIDER 9