April 2003        Volume 9, Number 4

Improvements Upgrade Iowa Hardwood Maker
Wieland & Sons benefitting from new McDonough equipment for primary breakdown, other changes.

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Today McDonough Manufacturing is still in Eau Claire, Wis. It is well known in the sawmill industry throughout the world as a supplier of sturdy, efficient, high strain bandmills, resaws, carriages, and other machinery. The company has received many patents over the years for innovations now taken for granted. These include the linebar resaw and the EDLF, or End Dogging Log Feed system; both are in common use in both the softwood and hardwood lumber industries. The 17-degree slant E series tong dog carriage supplied to Wieland & Sons is a new design for McDonough; five of these carriages are in operation.

Inovec, located in Eugene, Ore., specializes in high recovery scanning optimization systems for the sawmill industry; it has installed more than 600 systems since 1979.

The Inovec Yieldmaster head rig-carriage optimization system with StereoScan 3-D scanning purchased by Wieland & Sons is one of a family of optimizers designed for various machine centers in a modern mill. Other Inovec systems include small log, edger, canter, curve sawing and trimmer optimizers. The scanner used at Wieland & Sons is a StereoScan 3-D laser scanning system that uses LMI DynaVision L-4 laser scanners to accurately measure the contours of the log’s surface. The optimizer models the log shape using thousands of measurement points and moves the log to the calculated opening face and position. StereoScan helps increase the overall productivity of the head rig-carriage by improving speed, accuracy and yield. The scanning optimization technology can increase yield at the primary breakdown centers from 2-10%, according to Inovec.

Jacobson Engineering Inc., located in McKinleyville, Calif., is a family-owned business specializing in digital electric drives and control systems for log carriages, bandmills and other sawmill machinery. The company custom designs and builds PLC controls and also supplies ergonomically designed operator consoles to complete the package. The variable speed carriage drive system purchased by Wieland & Sons is a new design and uses a normal mill AC electric motor rather than a DC motor, which are expensive to replace. The drive system uses AC vector control to provide infinitely variable feed speeds. "I never thought I would buy an electric carriage drive," said Dean, "but the Jacobson drive system impressed me."

Dean summed up the benefits of the head rig improvements. "Company production was at the 7 million board feet level before the system upgrade and is now approaching 10 million. We expect it to eventually go up to nearly 12 million. We are seeing very significant increases in production, yield, grade and average board width. I attribute this to many factors, the most significant of which is the Inovec StereoScan 3-D laser scanning system. Our feed speed has improved, down time has improved, and accuracy and miscuts have drastically improved."

"Feed speeds are now 20 percent faster than before," he added, "and both recovery and grade have improved, especially from further out on the log circle. Saw kerf was 0.281-inch before and now its 0.125-inch. We also feel we are hitting the minimum opening face around 97 percent of the time with the new Inovec StereoScan 3-D scanning system."

Wieland & Sons is equipped with seven American Wood Dryer kilns with a combined capacity of 350,000 board feet; individual kilns have capacity ranging from 35,000 to 75,000 board feet. High air speed is used for drying, and the time varies by species. On average, it takes about 13 days to dry the lumber to 7% moisture content. Three kilns are designed to dry hard maple lumber.

A wood-fired cogeneration system was installed in 1996; it provides heat for the kilns. The system consists of a wood fired, high pressure boiler rated at 600 HP that burns green chips and sawdust from the mill. It produces high pressure steam to drive a high pressure turbine, which in turn drives a 450 KW generator to produce part of the mill’s electric power requirements. Steam from the back side of the turbine is used to heat the kilns. "Since the new head rig system went in, we are making less sawdust and chips, so have had to bring in wood chips from our other mill to help fire the boiler," said Dean.

The planer department is in a 44,000 square-foot building that was constructed in 1997. It houses an S282 and S382 Newman-Whitney high-speed planer for roughing. These lines run automatically using an Allen Bradley programmable logic controller (PLC).

An S290 Newman-Whitney planer located elsewhere on the site is used for finishing. "I designed and built infeeds with a special skewing device so that boards are pulled into the planers at an angle," said Dean, who got the idea while fishing in Canada. One of the main benefits of feeding the boards into the planer at an angle is that it allows more even wear on the carbide knives, resulting in much longer blade life.

A fleet of 30 company vehicles includes pick-ups, straight trucks, pre-haulers and 12 semi-trucks for log and lumber deliveries to as far away as New York.

Many of the personnel at Wieland have been working at the mill for a long time, which is a testament to good employee relations. Some of the key people are plant manager Emil Tisl Jr.(25 years) and sawmill manager Scott Zhiss (19 years). Others include Bill Naber, supervisor of kilns and energy systems; Delbert Thompson, flooring sales plus planing supervisor (20 years); maintenance supervisor Mark Fangman, head filer Jeff Bahndorf, flooring supervisor Lurinda Kurt, and Tracey Schlafer, manager of the company’s sawmill in Muscoda, Wis.

When asked about future plans, Dean Wieland said, "We are always looking to improve and are looking at an optimizing edger system and a ring debarker."

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