Industry Developments

Vida Wood AB of Sweden has acquired Woodard Forest & Imports of Smithfield, NC. Woodard has been renamed Vida Wood US. The firm becomes another marketing arm for Vida Wood, which operates eight sawmills, an industrial plant, and a plastics component plant, all in southern Sweden. Other marketing branches are in the U.K., Denmark, Hong Kong and Sweden.

A spokesman for Vida says the new venture in the U.S. will better position Vida Wood AB to take advantage of a recovery as the U.S. housing market improves.

The Latest News

Armstrong Manufacturing is pleased to announce the most technologically advanced method of leveling saws ever released. Thanks to a new form of linear positioning, unprecedented positional accuracy is now available on all new Circle Saw Levelers. This new design operates solely on a new magnetic drive system that completely removes all pneumatic components. No more concerns about dry air, dirty air, consistent air pressure, or adjustments that are true of all pneumatic systems. Calibration is a snap, and cylinder timing a thing of the past. A new “open” design uses a light curtain instead of an enclosure, keeping the filer aware of the status of the machine at all times. Take a look at the pictures.

Innovative Sawcoat by Dan Shell

Long-time saw blade and cutting tools equipment supplier Pacific/Hoe is emerging from a tough year that saw the death of company leader George Jacobsen and a distinct softening of markets as lumber producers reduce operating hours and production in response to a bleak housing market, says new Pacific/Hoe President Jim Ruthven, a 25-year Pacific/Hoe employee who took over after Jacobsen’s death in July 2007.

Yet Pacific/Hoe continues its tradition of innovation, with a new thermally applied saw blade coatings system and a complete re-thinking of the company’s relationships with mill filing rooms.

Measure That Matters

Forest industry veterans often think of optimization as a better way to cut a log. In sawing optimization computer algorithms are employed in such a way as to maximize the volume or value of lumber from logs of varying characteristics. In bucking optimization a similar approach is employed to ensure that long logs are bucked into the best collection of segments. In business optimization the focus is optimizing the overall business rather than individual processes. The term for this kind of optimization is “Profit Optimization.”

Profit optimization is a valuable technology for dynamic business environments. The greatest trend observed in the profit optimization field in recent years has been the desire to optimize larger business environments. The reason for this trend is the realization by sharp operators that they can capture synergies by optimizing multiple plants as a single business system. No conscientious manager wants to leave money on the table. Profit optimization y

New Bearings Simplify Roll Changeout

New bearings that are easy to remove make it faster and easier for Culp Lumber to change the feed rolls on a Newman Whitney SS-30 shaving machine here at Culp’s southern pine lumber mill. They also promise to reduce maintenance costs, since the bearings aren’t damaged during removal and can be re-installed quickly.

Culp Lumber produces 80MMBF annually. The company, founded in the 1920s, has a trucking, wood procurement and logging operation, as well as the sawmill, dry kilns and a state-of-the-art planer mill. In addition, it produces a large volume of byproducts that include wood chips for the paper industry, sawdust for the poultry business, and bark for the landscaping industry.

Nothing Left to Change by Tonya Cooner-Vots

Many sawmills are taking advantage of slower times to upgrade machinery or otherwise improve operations. At Battle Lumber, which is one of the largest hardwood lumber producers in the country, one of the departments mill officials are focusing on is saw filing. Both circle and band saws are completely maintained in-house at Battle, and at least a dozen employees tend to this on a daily basis.

VP Tommy Battle says they’re not working as much on reducing kerf as they are eliminating sawing variations. “We’re using a program called L-Size throughout the mill,” he says. “This program consists of manually measuring boards at six points and entering them into the L-Size program where it generates results giving us the average thickness, amount of wedge and the standard deviation not only within that particular board but also between the last set of boards entered into the program.”

Optical Machine Alignment by Dave Halstead

One of the most overlooked items in mills is machine health. A very important part of that machine health is maintaining proper machine alignment. Filers, supervisors and managers desire ever tighter sawing and chipping accuracy. This is accomplished in part by utilizing proper filing room equipment while still maintaining the thinnest kerfs and tolerances possible. Proper alignment of machinery completes this desired accuracy.

If machine centers are not aligned and calibrated properly, sawmills cannot achieve the overrun, production and accuracy required to compete in today’s competitive wood products industry. In tough economic times, ensuring machine alignment is a great way to boost performance and profits with a minor investment.

Optimizing the Log by T. Mark Culpepper

Mid-South Engineering Co. was formed in 1969 when Weyerhaeuser Co. purchased Dierks Forest Inc. The Mid-South founders were the engineering vice president and several of the senior engineers for Dierks and were responsible for the concept development, feasibility, design, construction and commissioning of all capital projects within Dierks Forest. At the time, Dierks operations included a paper mill, three softwood lumber mills, a treating plant (lumber & poles), an insulation board plant with a medium density fiberboard line, a hardwood flooring mill, paper bag plant, gypsum board plant and a charcoal manufacturing operation. Having originated from such a diverse background and seeing projects from the owner’s point of view, the Mid-South founders set the tone of how Mid-South Engineering could best execute a project. A key to Mid-South’s continued success has been recruiting personnel who could carry on its founders’ philosophy of pioneering designs and efficient project execution.

Still Preoccupied with Sawmills by Daniel Rowley

When I finished college in 1961, as a 25-year-old kid, my first job was with a machinery company called Fryer Dry Kiln Company, which was located under the St. Johns Bridge in Portland, Ore. Besides kilns, they manufactured lumber handling systems including lumber stackers.

At Fryer, I cut my teeth designing hydraulic systems and controls. I was baptized into hydraulics one day when I was literally inside the framework of a power unit, with a five-gallon accumulator, when a compression fitting let loose. For those who are not into hydraulics it suffices to say that my coveralls and I ended up soaked in oil.

Equipment & Supplier News

Newnes-McGehee (USNR) has received an order for a “new life” trimmer optimizer upgrade at Boise Cascade’s mill in LaGrande, Ore. The upgrade includes both replacement sensors and new optimization software that will increase recovery.

“New life” refers to a new capital purchase utilizing pre-owned, refurbished sensors. Since Newnes-McGehee launched the LPS3 sensor in 1999, more than 1000 LPS2 sensors have come back to the warehouse. While not the latest release, LPS2 is still a solid sensor. Coupled with Newnes-McGehee’s latest software (V6.3), LPS2 offers an attractive return on investment, according to USNR. The existing scanner is a D*TEC system that was installed in the ’80s. The system architecture is based on the Multi-Bus 1 computer platform that was discontinued by Intel. As parts for this system became unavailable, the architecture became obsolete and unserviceable.

Hard News In The Making

Indeck Energy Services, Inc. reports that two pellet ventures, one in Wisconsin and the other in Mississippi, should begin production in 2009.

Indeck Energy Services and Midwest Forest Products Co., owners of Indeck Ladysmith, LLC, report that the Indeck Ladysmith BioFuel (pellet) Center in Ladysmith, Wis. has sold a major portion of the plant’s first year’s output and has started construction. The plant will be located within Ladysmith’s Forest Products Industrial Park. It’s expected to be in full commercial operation by July 1, 2009. The company also has a number of letters of intent for sales amounts exceeding the plant’s planned production capacity. The company has started on-site construction activity including earth work and existing rail line relocation work.

Is Green Energy Here to Stay? by Rich Donnell

The question everybody is asking is this: Can the U.S. suck it up and still go “green” when oil and gas prices are half what they were when the U.S. decided to become serious, this time, about going “green”?

I say “this time” because it has happened in the past that the U.S. has decided to go green, always related to a Middle East upheaval that threatened the stability and supply of oil. This time there was no upheaval per se, except for the re-defined worldwide demand on oil (hello China), which prompted prices to shoot into space. Once again the U.S. started feeling, well, vulnerable.