1,200 m/min achieved

Production started in January 2019. “Since then, the plant has been running permanently at 1,200 m/min in a three-shift operation, five days a week,” Merforth tells us and adds: “Putting the plant into operation took very little time. After only a few optimizations, we reached the target performance.”

Constant flow of boards required inside the plant

The plant’s efficiency really becomes evident when you see the permanent flow of lumber into the machine. Our readers can see it for themselves in the holzkurier.tv-video (see link below). The limit is not the feed speed of the plant, but the infeed of the planing machines and the taking over of the boards when they leave the planer. Solutions supplied by Canadian company Milltec have to accomplish both tasks.

Package width plus 30% and more output

“Also, 1,200 meters per minute are not the limit. The machine could actually handle more but the challenge is to get the additional quantities to it,” Technical Manager Jan Kiesewetter says with regard to a possible optimization. An improvement was achieved after having operated at full capacity for three years. “We had to increase the stacking width by 30% so that more boards could reach the planing machine. Implementing wider stacks in the entire plant was a complex task. We had to adapt the entire logistics process at the site which shows the importance of our planing mill.” “So far, we have done only one retrofit worth mentioning and that was adding a fourth pair of rollers on the feed deck,” Stephan Lohmeyer says about the smooth start. His company, Scantec Industrieanlagen, is based in Feldkirchen near Munich/DE and represents Gilbert in Central and Eastern Europe. “Mercer is equipped with Gilbert’s basic tool kit. So far, no tuning has been required.”

Only 10 m of space required

The plant itself is surprisingly compact. The housing of the machine requires hardly more than 10 meters of space. “Visitors are surprised that this is supposed to be the heart of our planing mill,” Merforth says, amused.

“One of the corporate requirements for the investment was to achieve the highest possible performance with little equipment,” Kiesewetter recalls. “While other companies would install two or three machines to achieve this performance, one machine with this much power is enough for us. This also keeps labor and maintenance costs low.”

Fully automatic operation

As for labor costs, the operation of the plant is practically unmanned. The feed speed is adjusted by the Alfha control depending on the dimensions of the wood. Only one operator at the planing machine controls the infeed as well as the destacking of the layers. Gilbert’s automatic planer does not need to be adjusted in any way. Planing is particularly easy when it comes to the main product 2-by-4. As a result, 200 to 220 cycles per minute can be achieved with this product.

Pulling the wood in, not stuffing it in

The wood is pulled in by powerful feed rollers using the pull-through technology. “Currently, we have a 30 cm gap between the boards, which is a good compromise between performance and reliability. When damaged wood is too dry, it breaks more easily. In that case, having a gap is an advantage,” Kiesewetter explains. When the Holzkurier visited the mill, nothing broke. Counter-rotating deceleration rollers gently reduce the speed of the boards, which makes it possible to feed board after board into the following Milltec cross conveyor. This process is so precise that no carrier remains empty.

At the end of the tour, Merforth mentions the exact dimensioning of the finished wood and its surface. “A machine with a lower feed speed might give the wood a finer surface but for our customers, the quality we produce here is excellent,” he adds.

Machines for every requirement

“Gilbert doesn’t ‘just’ produce high-performance machines. There are five planer models – from special profiling solutions and medium-performance machines to high-speed models,” Lohmeyer explains. The Mass Timber planer, for example, can process pieces which are 137 cm wide and 40 cm thick. “Gilbert developed this planer specifically to meet the requirements of glue-laminated and cross-laminated timber manufacturers.” The S model impresses with a variable feed rate of 90 to 550 m/min.

Gilbert’s upcoming projects at European customers include installations at Pata Saldus in Latvia, at Södra and Karl Hedin in Sweden as well as plants for HS Timber in Belarus (2022) and HS Timber in Argentina (2023).

Watch the video: World record: 1,200 m/min planing machine