Summary
• Weinig’s sales have risen 28% so far this year.
• Capital investment in its machinery development programme has continued at €2m a year.
• Core to Weinig have been improvements in optimising capabilities, notably in timber scanning.
• Weinig has produced its own range of cross-laminated timber products – Resortech and Vivatech.

As a result of rising global timber demand, Weinig acknowledges its processing technology has to be more than just efficient, productive and geared to minimising waste. Given the growing need to recover, recycle and reuse more wood and dump less, it also has to get the best value and best quality end products possible out of lower grade material.

Peter Lohmeyer, the machinery company’s marketing director, is only partly joking with his mission statement suggestion: “The future is crappy wood”. “Our slogan at the latest Ligna exhibition in May was actually “Making more out of wood”, but within that there’s an understanding that we have to make more out of all wood available. That includes lower grades – timber that might previously have been thrown away or burned,” he said.

“Rising demand means raw material can now be 70-80% of customers’ costs. So they’re pushing us like hell to find new ways of saving and making use of every piece of timber. At the same time they’re increasingly willing to invest in the right solutions.”

In the last few years Weinig hasn’t only faced up to these and the usual technical challenges confronting a cutting edge engineering business in a competitive market. It has also had to cope with the deepest machinery sector recession in living memory.

In the depths of the slump in 2009 global wood machine sales slumped an estimated 60%. Weinig reacted by cutting the workforce at its main plant and HQ at Tauberbischofsheim (TBB) near Stuttgart and all over the world from 1,260 to 1,000. Staff at its US arm were cut from 150 to 80. Sharp though the downturn was, the bounce back has been steep too. “In 2010 our sales rose 20%, and so far this year they’ve risen 28%. The US remains slow, but in other key markets, including the UK, we’ve seen good recovery. As a result our milling facility is back working six days a week and we’re about to introduce a Sunday shift. This is due to increased demand for Weinig machines, but also due to the fact that the milling shop in TBB is doing parts for all members in the Weinig Group, including Holz-Her.”

A vital factor in the sales recovery is that one area it didn’t trim in the downturn was its machinery development programme – hence continued capital investment of €2m a year. Weinig’s efforts to help the timber sector raise productivity and wood utilisation rates remained central to R&D through the downturn.

One outcome of the need to improve timber use has been advances in and increased uptake of engineered timber, something Weinig has both adapted and contributed to. “Consumption of products like finger-jointed scantlings, glulam and edge-glued panels, where you’re cutting out defects and putting the wood back together, continues to grow rapidly and it’s shaping and being shaped by processing technology,” said Mr Lohmeyer.

“These products not only enable us to get better use out of lower grade timber, they deliver predictable, homogenous materials to end users, for instance, 6m defect-free finger-jointed scantlings, which are completely predictable and result in greater productivity and further waste reduction.”

Core to Weinig have been enhancements in optimising capabilities, notably further advances in timber scanning. “The feed speed of today’s optimising cross-cuts, for example, means visual defecting is clearly no longer feasible. Our Luxembourg-based scanning division, LuxScan, produces machines capable of top and bottom scanning at 300m/min or even higher. The range also includes the FES-150 end scanner, the X-Scan, which detects internal defects using density variation, and the Shape-Scan, which measures bowing, bending and twisting with 3-laser triangulation sensors. Used in conjunction with a range of processing technology, these can boost yields by up to 10%, compared with manual sorting.”

Further advances have come through floating spindle technology, which has been developed and applied to an increasingly wide range of planers. It is used particularly for processing finger-jointed lamellas for glulam beams. These tend to curve, but, rather than cutting through the curvature, with the waste that entails, floating spindles follow the lamella’s contours, leaving the evening out process to the press.”

Mr Lohmeyer added: “As part of an overall machinery investment of €6.5m, a major French customer switched to the floating spindle system for its pre-moulding and moulding after finger-jointing. They made annual savings of €2m, or about 120,000m³ of timber.”

The number of new and upgradedmachines at the Ligna show in May underlined the unflagging pace of Weinig’s development programme. Probably the launch that garnered most headlines was the €28,000 Cube four-side planer/moulder.

This is designed for the smaller user, or larger companies as an add-on for short runs and one-offs alongside bigger machines, like the Weinig Powermat. It is so compact it can be moved around on a hand-operated lift truck. With Campus software controls, Easy Lock quick-change tooling and the VarioClamp system, Weinig calls it “plug and play”. “It’s like a sealed car engine unit. We don’t want users to worry about what’s going on inside,” said Mr Lohmeyer.

The 6/12m/min Cube was also shaped by the materials-saving imperative. The “intelligent moulder preview system” uses a laser guide to show the operator how spindle settings will process the timber, so they can adjust as necessary “guaranteeing maximum wood yield and minimum waste”. It also uses an optimised dust hood, cutting extraction energy consumption by 60%.

An added sell for the Cube is Weinig’s offer to finish it in a livery of the customer’s choice – a ‘Pimp my Cube’ service!

Ligna also saw the unveiling of theMultirex solid and engineered wood CNC machining centre, an early technical synergy between Weinig and panel processing and CNC machine specialist Holz-Her, which it bought in 2010.

The compact machine is designed for window, door, and conservatory component making, and is aimed at producers perhapsnot yet ready for Weinig’s bigger, 30% more expensive Conturex. A new scantlings insertion system also prevents tools from “tipping away” on infeed, further reducing the possibility of waste.

Multirex’s big brother the 5-axes Conturex machining centre was developed in 2003 following requests for a component manufacturing CNC system from a Netherlands furniture maker. The combined window and furniture-making format launched in 2009 has since sold worldwide with lead times currently around 18 months.

The latest model, the 124, features an automatic PowerGrip clamping table and two, 24-tool magazines, undertaking functions from “corner joint and outer contour profiling, to longitudinal processing, dowel hole drilling, and milling, and drilling for fittings. “We’ve got users with Conturex machining centres memorising up to 3,000 different profiles. They can also be left to work unmanned, alerting the operator by phone when the timber section magazine needs reloading!”

In Germany the take-up of the Conturex is helping focus wood window production among medium to larger manufacturers. “What we’re seeing is these companies supplying former smaller craft carpenter producers, so-called Sprinterschreiner, named after the Mercedes van, who now focus on installation. Again, this makes for overall greater efficiency.”

Weinig bills another recent raw material economising development, the OptiCut 450 Quantum II as the “fastest throughfeed optimising cross-cut saw”. It can run up to 100m/min and process random-width boards, with automated in-feed and out-feed, and incorporates the Combiscan+ 200 C-4D scanner. The latter can operate at 240m/min, using lasers and cameras to detect colour and structural defects, and the system can be built up to incorporate four saws.

Meanwhile, an offshoot of Weinig’s research into timber defecting and engineered wood processing are its own cross-laminated timber products, Resortech and Vivatech. “These use laminated sections of beech, produced on basically all products in the Weinig Group and compare in structural strength with conventional CLT, but use 30% less timber as they incorporate voids,” said Mr Lohmeyer.

“Our aim is machinery that maximises raw material use for the whole range of timber construction products, from roof top to basement. We’ve just got started in the creativity that’s possible with wood.”