Investment: AutoEye Truss System including digital vision system, 27 metric ton press, 35 nail plate magazine system (extended), nail plate aligner mechanism and stacker.
Start of business: 1992
Time for investment: 2019
Country: Germany
Reference: Owner Family Potts
Holzbau Potts is a family owned company. 1992, Rudolf Potts founded the carpentry and timber construction GmbH together with his sons Norbert and Andreas. Always striving to perform high-quality work in accordance with the craftsmanship, on time and not losing sight of the technical innovations, they are constantly expanding their scope of production and group of employees. Since 1999, Norbert Potts (structural engineer) and Andreas Potts (master carpenter) have been running Holzbau Potts Produktions GmbH. As a modern joinery center they produce various roof and wood constructions and deliver them throughout Germany.
What was the basis for the investment?
"Randeks´ AutoEye Truss system is a modern and economical production line for companies who produce great amounts of nail plate binders. Due to innovative automation the capacity of the system is huge. For these reasons, in our opinion, the system is trend-setting for economical and profitable production of nail plate trusses"
WHAT ARE THE MAIN BENEFITS OF THE SYSTEM?
"The main advantages are the fully automatic positioning and pressing of the nail plates with high accuracy. This makes it possible to produce a large numbers of building components in constant and high quality"
HOW WOULD YOU COMPARE THIS SYSTEM WITH TRADITIONAL SYSTEMS?
"In direct comparison the system not only creates advantages in terms of productivity, but also for colleagues who work with the system. The manual work of the nail plate positioning is now done automatically which makes work easier and also excludes human errors in nail plate positioning"
ANYHING MORE YOU WOULD LIKE TO ADD?
"As a company we look forward putting AutoEye into operation. Since four generations we constantly invest in new ideas and technology to keep the family business growing. We are convinced that with the Randek AutoEye Truss System we have taken the correct step ahead"
TRUSTING THE MARKET LEADER!
Below follows the English condensed version of Holzkurier, Jakob Wassermann interview with Mr Richard Potts, Owner of Northern German timber construction company Holzbau Potts.
Click here to read the full German Holzkurier article
Holzbau Potts a northern German timber construction company was able to triple its productivity. Richard Potts, the fourth generation working in the company, grabbed the opportunity to completely reorganize operations at a new location. “We were able to rethink and reorganize the entire production flow and logistics."
Three production halls extend from a covered storage area with capacity for 6,500 m³ of raw materials, finished roof trusses, and wooden frame elements. At its core the AutoEye Truss system, enabling nail plate truss production for components 2 to 24.5 meter long and up to 80 mm thick.
The initial assembly of nail plate ties is done manually with corrugated nails, after which the AutoEye handles all subsequent steps fully automatically. Potts estimates the system's output at 125 binders per shift, tripling their productivity. Following 3D design and dimensioning, the blueprint is sent directly to the system.
Pucktables, the system adapts to the specific truss geometry, and the workers place the processed structural solid timber beams along the pucks. A laser projecting the inner edges of the struts ensures the correct raw material dimensions are used. The assembly tables with the pucks were deliberately divided to be able to process two commissions simultaneously. For larger trusses, the tables are combined.
Fully automatic press The roof trusses are then transported to a roller conveyor using a cross conveyor and fed to the press. In this, every node is recorded using a camera system and the required nail plate is calculated based on the design data. The corresponding connector is requested at the same time from a 35-nailplate space magazine. Before pressing in, the nail plate is automatically aligned. With this procedure, a nail plate is pressed every 6 seconds. An alignment unit not only guarantees correct positioning but also ensures that the correct nail plate is used for each node.
Guaranteed Quality To ensure that each nail plate is fully pressed, the finished trusses are transported through a roller conveyor to a roller press. The press automatically adjusts to the corresponding truss height and guarantees the flawless insertion of each connector with a pressing force of 27 tons.
"With the Randek system, we can guarantee consistently high quality for the nail plate trusses. All potential sources of error are eliminated by the system. Additionally, the roller press at the end ensures that each nail plate is fully load bearing," explained Richard Potts.
Custom Development
In the final section, there is another refinement of the system, driven by a development initiated by Holzbau Potts: To make handling the finished nail plate trusses easier, the Swedish machine builders installed a stacker after the roller press, instead of a vacuum de-stacker. This component automatically straightens the elements.
"This development was our condition for purchasing the system. Randek was cooperative in adapting the project to our specifications. Normally, a vacuum lifter is installed instead of the stacker, but we wanted to store our trusses vertically. Additionally, the vacuum lifter would not have been able to handle the 24.5-meter-long components. Another reason we opted for the stacker is that it consumes less energy during operation," explained Potts.
"We first came into contact with Randek at LIGNA. Since we only wanted to install the latest technology at our new location, it quickly became clear after site visits in Norway and Sweden that Randek would be awarded the contract. Randek provides the best equipment currently available on the market," Potts concluded.