How thin-cutting can help to save millions of Euros
The costs for wood - be it valuable hardwoods or fast-growing woods from reforestation - have increased continuously in recent years. It is unlikely from the present point of view that this trend will be reversed in the long term. The easiest way to even out the rise in price of wood as a raw material and thus to maximize the margins achievable is to reduce waste during subsequent processing. WINTERSTEIGER offers the appropriate range of products for this: Process solutions for high-quality thin-cutting.
What exactly is understood by precise, high-quality thin-cutting?
There are various definitions of thin-cutting. We at WINTERSTEIGER assume that thin-cutting in the case of band saws must have a kerf of 1.1 mm whereas with frame saws it can be as thin as 0.7 mm. And how precise is "precise"? We understand precision to mean an accuracy of + 0.15 mm and cutting surfaces that can be glued immediately after sawing without the necessity for any further processing such as sanding or calibration.
The solution: Sawing with a thin kerf AND precision.
Simply having a narrow kerf is not the solution to saving wood when sawing. It also requires precision which is vital. The best success is achieved from a combination of the cutting width and the amount of wood that still has to be removed after sawing in order to achieve a smooth surface. It is the second point in particular that is usually given far too little attention. This processing stage usually takes place after sawing by means of calibration or sanding.
The diagrams show how the overall loss on sawing can be calculated:
- Fig. 1 shows a "standard" thin-cut with a regular kerf. The area marked in red indicates where additional loss occurs due to uneven and imprecise sawing.
- Fig. 2 shows the high-quality cutting kerf that is produced with our thin-cutting. The area marked in green indicates the loss.
The average figures of a "standard" cutting application illustrate the following: A conventional band saw has teeth with a "narrow" cutting width of 1.65 mm. However this band saw's lack of precision leads to approx. 1.2 mm having to be removed from the surface to obtain a smooth surface. The overall loss is therefore not just 1.65 mm but 2.85 mm because it is necessary to add on a calibration/sanding loss of 1.2 mm.
This is confirmed by a study in a Latin American saw mill with adjacent downstream processing of the wood blocks: Although only "budget-priced" raw materials from reforestation are used, the savings made simply by modernizing band saw technology are up to US$ 1.1 million per year. So you should check whether the saw technology existing in your premises is really the most cost efficient version for your purposes.
The advantages of thin-cutting and precision sawing.
Apart from the obvious advantages of money-saving - by using less wood for the production of an identical number of end products - saving wood during the sawing process offers even further advantages with real economic effects:
- Lower wood consumption means lower transport costs - from the place where the wood is felled to the mill in which it is processed.
- Less wood also means that less money is tied up in the wood stored.
- Less sawdust when sawing means less sawdust to dispose of. But who wants to produce sawdust anyway?
- Precise sawing means one processing step less. The elimination of calibration/sanding also means lower labor and tool costs and less production space required. Production becomes leaner and cheaper.
Example: Triangulo Flooring
Triangulo Flooring is a globally recognized company headquartered in Brazil that operates one of South America's most up-to-date plants for the production of wood flooring. Triangulo has its own FSC certified forests and produces every type of solid, engineered and laminate wood flooring. It exports almost its entire production of floors to the USA and Europe.
On commencing the production of engineered wood flooring in 2003, double circular saws were used at the time for sawing the blocks for manufacturing lamellas (top layers). In 2006, the first two DSG Eco Plus thin-cutting frame saws were purchased from WINTERSTEIGER to avoid sanding off the "offset" on the surface of the lamellas. A further 4 DSG Eco Plus have since been supplied. Production manager Marcelo Granemann says, "Every machine that we have invested in has paid for itself within approx. 6 months just in savings of wood alone.
Nowadays, Triangulo cuts its lamellas with 0.9 mm thin saws which is particularly interesting when very thin lamellas of 2.0 mm are sawn. Once again, the wood yield in this case is even more significant.
New band saw technology.
High-precision results using thin-cutting technology can be achieved not only with thin-cutting frame saws. In the past, band saws were always very fast but also rather inaccurate. Now everything has changed: It is now possible to produce saws with kerfs of only 1.1 mm combined with a precision of + 0.15 mm (like that of the thin-cutting frame saw). High-quality thin-cutting using WINTERSTEIGER band saw technology also features cutting widths of up to 660 mm and feed speeds of up to 60 m/min.
The combination of width, precision and flexibility makes this technology extremely interesting for manufacturers of doors and furniture, for producers of multi-layer boards and of course for producers of wood floorings. The revolutionary band saw DSB Singlehead by WINTERSTEIGER - no limits when it comes to precision thin-cutting.
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