Containerized competence

For Hundegger, North America is the biggest market outside of Europe. Over the years, the company built countless successful business relationships and shipped more than 260 machines from southern Germany across the Atlantic. The Holzkurier visited two renowned companies which are on Hundegger’s constantly growing list of overseas customers: Structurlam’s new production site in Conway, Arkansas, and Mercer’s CLT plant in Spokane, Washington.

American on the outside, European on the inside

British Columbia company Structurlam put its first US production site into operation in the summer of 2021. In an old steel factory in central Arkansas, the company has been producing glulam and CLT almost exclusively for the new Walmart headquarters ever since. What the outside of the factory hall does not quite give away is the state-of-the-art European wood processing technology under its tin roof. The company uses Microtec scanners from Brixen/IT, Minda presses from Minden/DE, and mechanization from System TM of Odder/DK for the transport of the wood and wood products.

Complete package for the Southern US

Three machines from German joining and panel processing expert Hundegger are the heart of the European machine park: a K2-Industry joinery machine and two UFA-Industry and PBA-E processing machines for CLT. Thus, Hundegger shipped almost its entire range of products to the United States.

“Structurlam has been a satisfied Hundegger customer for over two decades. The decision to continue working together at our new US production site was an easy one,” Hardy Wentzel tells us. The CEO of Structurlam is visibly satisfied with the German machine manufacturer.

When it was delivered at the end of 2020, the K2-Industry produced in Hawangen was the largest of its kind: “The joinery machine we built specially for Structurlam is designed for heights of up to 460 mm. Before we launched our new Robot-Max, it was the biggest machine we delivered in terms of height,” Wolfgang Piatke, Senior Sales Manager at Hundegger, says, describing one of the aspects which made this one a special project. The UFA and PBA, with their maximum dimensions, are also designed to meet the requirements of the US market and can easily process panels with lengths of over 18 meters.

Precision on all sides

Coming out of the press, the panel first passes through the UFA where, in a first step, the panel is formatted on all four sides and simple milling work is done. The latter includes cable ducts and rabbets as well as various openings. This saves valuable capacities on the large CNC portal machine, which are then available for other, more complex work. “The UFA is comparable to a surface planer which can also be used for milling. Longitudinal processing, for example for the attachment of connecting boards to ceiling structures, is also possible. This way, ceiling elements can be fully formatted without having to pass through the PBA afterwards. The processing of panels only produces sawdust and wood chips but no cuttings. This offers additional advantages in the handling and further processing of the by-products,” Piatke says about the advantages of the UFA. The panel processing machine not only works with high precision but also with a high throughput speed. “If the layout of a production hall is well thought-out, one UFA is completely sufficient for three downstream PBAs,” the sales manager explains. Processing the underside of a panel can be very time-consuming: “With the UFA, the underside can be processed, too, without the need to turn the panel. This saves a lot of time,” Piatke adds, describing further advantages of the panel processing machine.

Making the most of synergies

When different machines are supposed to carry out several different types of processing on one panel, intelligent systems are needed in the background in order to make sure that everything goes to plan. “Cam Multimachine” is the name of the Cambium software tool developed by Hundegger for this purpose. This tool allows for the intelligent interconnection of the UFA and the PBA and automatically decides which machine is equipped with the most suitable tool for a certain type of processing. The software accesses the nesting data from production planning and creates a coherent production program for both machines. Thanks to this program, the PBA recognizes when certain processing has already been done on the UFA and does not do it a second time.

PBA for a “startup”

In the north-west of the country, too, Hundegger’s expertise is trusted. In Spokane, Washington, in the former Katerra plant, a PBA-E has been running reliably for several years. As is the case in Arkansas, the machine in Spokane is designed for particularly large panels with dimensions of up to 3.6 by 18.3 meters. In this respect, no changes have been made since Mercer took over the production site in the summer of 2021. The two companies are still working closely together to successfully manage the restart. “We are in close contact with the new plant managers. Together, we are making a constant effort to optimize the production site and get the best out of the existing machines,” Piatke says about some of the challenges after the restart.