Building elements

Roof truss

A roof truss is a prefabricated triangulated timber framework that supports a roof and spans the space between external walls.

Also known as truss, roof trusses, timber roof truss

A roof truss is an engineered framework of timber members joined in a rigid, usually triangular, arrangement. Triangulation is what makes it efficient: it lets a relatively light structure carry the load of the roof and transfer it out to the supporting walls, using less material than traditional cut-and-pitch roof carpentry.

The members are held together at each joint by a nail plate: a toothed steel connector plate pressed into the timber from both sides. Trusses are made to a structural design for each building, then delivered to site and lifted into place, which removes most of the roof carpentry from the construction programme.

The parts of a typical fink (W) roof truss. Every joint is held by a nail plate.

In industrial production

In industrial production, trusses are laid out on a jig and the nail plates are pressed in by a hydraulic press, either guided by an operator or fully automatically. The Randek Truss System NT is the manual version: an operator moves C-press heads over each joint, with laser projection showing the layout, and it produces every type of truss. The AutoEye Truss System is the automatic version: machine vision identifies each joint and the plates are picked, placed and pressed with essentially zero setup time.

AutoEye System Randek Truss System NT

Talk to Randek

Building this at scale? Tell us what you produce and we’ll point you to the right system.

Talk to your team Back to the glossary