Ninety-five percent of 175,000 pallets The Timbermen Company in Camak, Georgia ships each month are stringer pallets—mostly pine, some hardwood. “Automation and assembly in the pallet manufacturing has gotten more sophisticated. Technology is changing the way we move lumber, process lumber, and manage our business,” says McCorkle, general manager. “In order to keep up with the demands of our customers in the food and pharmaceuticals industry and to comply with USDA standards, we have to keep on top of what’s new in lumber processing equipment.” That’s the main reason why McCorkle went to Expo Richmond 2014, as he has bi-annually since the mid-1980s.
Equipment demonstrations offered by Pallet Manufacturing Group and Automated Industrial Technologies at the Expo got him thinking seriously about ways to increase production on their remanufacturing line.
Like his competitors, McCorkle understands that the keys to efficiency are production speed, accuracy of cut, and fewer labor hours. “When I watched the HY400 Resaw, I thought it was the most well-built and versatile saw I’ve seen. It’s compact. The wear parts are easy to get to. The HY400 is at least one-third to two times faster than what I’m running now. Truly out-of-the-box thinking went into the design of that saw.”
After a story in Pallet Enterprise on the HY400 Resaw installed at North Star Pallets in Alberta, Canada was published in April 2014, PMG president Greg Wine started to get calls. Mill operators wanted to know where they could see the HY400 running and if it really was more clean and accurate than a band saw with both the center cut and line bar cutting. Customers from all over North America came to the Expo. Wine admits that the HY400 Resaw demo was the hit of the show.
As hardwood has been in short supply and many pallet manufacturers have been forced to adapt equipment to the more available softwoods, the demo proved that the HY400 is equally fast and accurate with both type materials, especially on 11/16” cuts. “With the right infeed and outfeed, the HY400 is the highest production thin kerf saw I’ve ever seen,” said Wine.
McCorkle commented, “The HY400 is so fast on a straight through line that we’d need to adjust the saw speed to optimize the line and prevent surges. But I see how a faster resaw is the next step on our remanufacture line.”
Automated Industrial Technologies, www.autoindtech.com , has designed and built innovative and cost-justified solutions for production and testing machinery in the automotive, defense, electronics, energy, lumber, medical, and pharmaceutical industries since 1991.
– Beth Knabel (June 18, 2014)