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sawmill productivity/workflow

Started by giant splinter, October 31, 2012, 10:35:49 AM

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giant splinter

I have recently become interested in upscaling my methods of moving the finished product from my LT40HD deck to the stack&sticker area or air drying rack. I do not have a forklift and use a crane for the heavy stuff. I have been looking at roller out feed tables by Wood-Mizer and roller conveyors made by other companies, this seems to be a reasonable way to deal with improving the output productivity.
I am trying to improve my workflow and get things set up for ease of operation. In the case of large beams I can rig them and swing them to a stacking area then sticker and cover. As far as the sawdust goes I have that covered, slabs and unusable short flitches along with general mill waste I just make firewood out of whats usable and run the rest through a chipper.
I know there are a lot of sawyers on this forum that have gone through this transition of having a log jam on the inflow and a haystack that has reached a point of critical mass on the outflow. I would like to have some of the experts bounce some ideas off me to see if I am on the right track.
roll with it

beenthere

Do you have pics of the mill and the area that you have now, so suggestions might fit your operation?

Trying to picture how you operate now, with the crane.
south central Wisconsin
It may be that my sole purpose in life is simply to serve as a warning to others

Bibbyman

Wood-Mizer LT40HDE25 Super 25hp 3ph with Command Control and Accuset.
Sawing since '94

Chuck White

Thanks for your sawmill tour Bibby!
~Chuck~  Cooks Cat Claw sharpener and single tooth setter.  2018 Chevy Silverado and 2021 Subaru Ascent.
With basic mechanical skills and the ability to read you can maintain a Woodmizer  LT40!

Brucer

I made my own outfeed table using Wood-Mizer rollers (I bought 'em as spare parts from their outfeed table). The WM rollers are very heavy duty and weatherproof. You can get rollers in various sizes (and prices) as well: 24" rollers from the outfeed table, 24" & 17" rollers from the twin-blade edger, and 9" and 12" rollers from the Resaw infeed and return tables.

One thing I discovered working with these things is that you don't need to have hex holes to mount the hex roller shafts in. Just drill a round hole big enough to accomodate the hex shaft and the sharp corners will keep the shaft from turning.
Bruce    LT40HDG28 bandsaw
"Complex problems have simple, easy to understand wrong answers."

giant splinter

Thank you Gentlemem
I think the video is great, lots of rollers and good tip on the W/M parts Brucer.
Beenthere I only use the crane on my beam work and once i get a mill shed built I will only be able to use the crane on nice days when I can drag the mill outside as some of the beamwork is 27' to 32' long and up to 8"x14"  the nice thing is I can rig and swing things then stack and sticker, once the beams are set up I rig and swing a portable roof section over onto the beam load and it stays there with the wind blowing through to help with the drying To add more timbers I just lift the roof section off, load more and place the roof section back on the top again. That idea was found on the Wood Web and it works great.
The rollers are the ticket and a set of forks on the backhoe or loader would sure help around here.I like the workflow on Bibby's mill setup and the transverse roller ramp is a super idea with the slabs can dump right down on the forks and over to the firewood area
All the info is very good and you guys are great thanks for sharing,now I need to draw up a rough layout and jockey things around so that everything flows in an organized manner.
                                                             Thank you
                                                                           Richard
roll with it

Brucer

It helps to think of your work flow as a series of operations. For example, dealing with slabs at my site consists of 6 operations:

  • drag the slabs off the log.
  • move the slabs to the rack.
  • strap a full rack of slabs.
  • empty a slab bundle from the rack.
  • shift the slab bundle to the storage field.
  • load the customer.

Looking at things this way helps you find ways to make things work better. For example, you should never handle material more than once during any operation.

You can split operations. I used to do operations 4 & 5 all at once with the front end loader -- lift the bundle out of the rack and shift it to storage. But after some analysis I figured I was losing 10 minutes each time just going to fire up the loader and then park it again. So I designed some new racks that I can dump on their sides and roll out the slab bundle. I have room to dump out three bundles before having to get the loader and deal with them.

You can combine operations. I built some long roller tables so I could do operations 1 & 2 together. Now the slabs get dragged onto the table and shifted to the slab rack right away. This let me set up three slab racks, each one for a different length of bundle. Now I can saw a lot of logs before fetching the loader.

You can eliminate operations. I store my slab bundles up off the ground on some small cedar logs, one row for each different length. Some customers will come in, pay me for "x" number of bundles, and then buck them in place and load themselves. Raising the bundles off the ground makes it easier for the customers to buck them up. And I charge a bit less if they load themselves.

You can speed up operations. My two favourite firewood customers have got things figured out to perfection. They pull in with a trailer and position it just so. Then they do all the preliminary stuff that has to happen before I load them. Then they wait patiently until I finish my cut. I just have to hop on the loader, grab the first bundle in the row, place it on the trailer, and go back to sawing. It's so quick that I give them a break on the price as well. Both of them buy several bundles in advance so we don't waste time on a dozen separate transactions.
Bruce    LT40HDG28 bandsaw
"Complex problems have simple, easy to understand wrong answers."

customsawyer

If you are trying to increase production it helps to look at every single task. Try to figure out ways to cut just a few seconds or minutes from each task and you will be amazed at how much your production will increase.
Two LT70s, Nyle L200 kiln, 4 head Pinheiro planer, 30" double surface Cantek planer, Lucas dedicated slabber, Slabmizer, and enough rolling stock and chainsaws to keep it all running.
www.thecustomsawyer.com

Brucer

One thing I discovered is that whenever you change something, it affects everything else. Sometimes for the better, sometimes not.

Adding a twin-blade edger had a major impact on the workflow, sometimes in ways I hadn't anticipated. Overall it improved my production. It also created new "opportunities" for even more improvements.

One problem I found is that each new opportunity for improvement takes up another chunk of my time. And it seems the more I improve things, the more production I lose when I spend another chunk of time improving things.
Bruce    LT40HDG28 bandsaw
"Complex problems have simple, easy to understand wrong answers."

customsawyer

It can turn into a vicious circle. If you let it.
Two LT70s, Nyle L200 kiln, 4 head Pinheiro planer, 30" double surface Cantek planer, Lucas dedicated slabber, Slabmizer, and enough rolling stock and chainsaws to keep it all running.
www.thecustomsawyer.com

giant splinter

Thank you All for your help and input on this post, it has been said before that the Forestry Forum is a place where you can get any question answered and once again has been proven itself to be the case.
Jeff recently posted a video on how to service the safety brake on the Husky 455 8) smiley_sun, good link <grin> mine still would have been messed up and removed from the saw till the next trip into the saw shop to get it repaired.
Custom Sawyer, Brucer and Bibbyman have steered me in the right direction on the portable roller out feed and forklift concepts, and now I am thinking an edger might be in order to really smooth out the operation, Customsawyer.com is a nice website to get ideas on getting things flow at a nice pace. The old time photos are very special as well as the ease of getting around on the site.
Thanks  Everyone
This forum and all the members here are incredible. Richard
roll with it

customsawyer

I think you might have been talking about my web site and if so the thanks has to go to Jeff since he designed it. The actual address is www.thecustomsawyer.com
Two LT70s, Nyle L200 kiln, 4 head Pinheiro planer, 30" double surface Cantek planer, Lucas dedicated slabber, Slabmizer, and enough rolling stock and chainsaws to keep it all running.
www.thecustomsawyer.com

levans

Brucer,
Any chance I could see a picture of you slab racks. strapping and moving the slab bundles is one of the most time consuming  chores for Me.
Thanks

giant splinter

Customsawyer I was indeed referring to your website and it is a well done site with a lot of photographs .... thank you for getting the correct link information added to the post.
roll with it

Bibbyman

A long time ago I started a post about how to increase bandmill production.  We collected many good comments.  I later condensed the replies into a document I filed in the knowledge base.

https://forestryforum.com/cgi-bin/tips/tips.cgi?display:1048166748-10029.txt

It's a good read.   :P

Here is the original post.

Least expensive way to increase sawmill production

https://forestryforum.com/board/index.php/topic,1325.msg16021.html#msg16021




Wood-Mizer LT40HDE25 Super 25hp 3ph with Command Control and Accuset.
Sawing since '94

francismilker

Thanks all for posting the good info on this thread.

I'm doing it on a small scale but continually find myself tripping over my organization ::)

I just spent a large part of yesterday organizing around the mill and laying out some cants to stack slabs on.  I have to keep it simple enough for customers to get to the slabs and me to get them there without moving them too far. 

I have to make it ergonomical because I'm a one man operation when my son is in school.  When he's out of school, I've got a slab grunt!!! 8)
"whatsoever thy hands finds to do; do it with thy might" Ecc. 9:10

WM LT-10supergo, MF-271 w/FEL, Honda 500 Foreman, Husq 550, Stihl 026, and lots of baling wire!

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