Austrian sawmill machinery manufacturer Springer Maschinenfabrik and BSW are developing a strong partnership.
BSW Timber is focused on the major improvement of planing and grading of home-grown timber and Springer, whose extensive range of technology includes log handling, sawn timber sorting and further processing systems, recently agreed on the delivery of a planing mill to the BSW mill in Carlisle. This follows similar installations at BSW’s Fort William and Dalbeattie mills.
The upgrade of the Howie Forest Products mill in Dalbeattie has included the delivery of a second high-speed stacker from Springer – and a Springer Compact planing mill is being commissioned. It is equipped with a 240m/min planing machine and a Microtec GoldenEye, designed for 300,000m³ wet and planed material.
It is the first of three planing lines of the same concept. A second line is under construction at BSW Timber’s Fort William site and will be operational by the end of this year. The third line will be delivered to BSW’s Carlisle mill in the summer of 2012.
The installation
Springer technology being installed includes a double tilt hoist to bring single or double destacked packs into the line. Any laths or bearers at destacking are collected and brought to collecting chutes. In the following manual grading section (behind the lug loader and board turner) the reject boards are marked. These boards are rejected after the scanner.
An accumulating unit transports the material to the Microtec quality scanner GoldenEye 702. As well as the quality of the wood, moisture and twist and bow of every board can be detected.
With the quality of information supplied by the scanner, boards are either rejected or continue along the line. In the sorting mode they come direct to the tray sorter. If the material is to be planed, it goes to the planer infeed.
Behind the planer the boards are separated and go to the tray sorter which consists of six horizontal trays, designed for smooth handling of high-value planed boards.
The trays are emptied automatically and boards come to the layer trim unit. Board lengths measuring 1.8-4.8m can be produced here and can also be split with a middle cut saw.
System advantage
At the packaging machine which is designed for 15 layers per minute, the Dalbeattie mill uses card dispensers instead of laths. This system has the advantage of an automatic and exact adoption of the exact package width.
Depending on the production programme, finished packages can be sent direct to the package press and foiling or to the quarter pack unit via a bypass.
The half-packages are split into smaller units, strapped and repacked to a standard package size with a special packaging machine. At the end of the process, a foil dispenser puts the corresponding foil on the packages and the last straps are put on.
“These three installations show the attractive products Springer can offer to sawmill customers in the UK,” said Gero Springer, director of Springer. The partnership with BSW is a strong signal of the company’s faith in the future of the UK market, he added.
