Planing has always been one of Ledinek’s core competencies. Over the past few years and decades, the company has frequently launched new and further developments in planing, thereby offering its customers tailor-made solutions which meet the rapidly changing market requirements. With the Superles product line, Ledinek has developed a premium high-performance wide planer for the production of high-quality bars, solid structural timber, duo/trio beams, glue-laminated and cross-laminated timber for timber engineering. “We developed our Superles machines for a wide range of uses and the best surface quality. In the development process, we made sure that the big possible dimensions of the construction elements don’t have a negative effect on the processing speed or life cycle of the machines”, says sales manager Robert Mlinaric, explaining the idea behind the Superles, and adds that the machines are a collection of the best that Ledinek has to offer.
Planing and grinding
Now, Ledinek is expanding its Superles line to include the 1300 8V+4F type for beams with cross-sections of up to 1350 by 320 mm. The new versatile machine can be used as finishing planer, for profiling and, if necessary, as a grinding machine for finishing the elements from above and below. The first machine of this type is currently being completed at the company’s headquarters in Hoce, Slovenia. It has eight cuttershafts for calibrating and profiling as well as four chamfering units which can be combined individually.
Ledinek also integrated a specially developed surface grinding unit. “This unit has a grinding depth of 0.2 to 0.3 mm and thanks to the oscillating movements, it generates perfect grinding patterns and guarantees a long life cycle of the grinding belts,” explains sales engineer Andrej Holc.
Intended both as a finishing planer for glulam and CLT elements, the first machine of this type will be used in a CLT production plant where it primarily does the final calibration of the elements, which are up to 1250 mm wide. As for visible quality elements, the machine also does the grinding. Holc mentions the lateral profiling of the elements as a further possible application of the Superles: “After that, the elements only have to be assembled on the construction site according to their profiles.”
Equipped with eight cuttershafts and four chamfering units, the machine can easily process straight glulam elements. “With this further development, we successfully created an extremely versatile finishing planer which is interesting not only for big, but also for small and medium-sized plants,” sums up Holc.
Practical further developments
Furthermore, Ledinek has recently developed numerous other components which can be integrated as modules into all Superles machines. Holc gives special rabbeting units, grooving and vertical profiling spindles as examples. The latter have a clamp length of 630 mm and a spindle diameter of 80 mm. The spindle has an axial adjustment range of 330 mm which enables the planer to finish glued beam blocks of up to 600 mm in thickness.
“Thanks to the enormous axial adjustment range and the possibility to equip the vertical spindle with various planing and profiling tools, it is also possible to switch to a different product by changing tools at the push of a button without losing time,” explains Holc.
