BACKGROUND:
For this project I was to design a fully automated custom system to offload raw laminated sheets of flooring material off a stacked bunk, feed them into a gang rip saw to cut them to width, transfer them laterally into a feeder which would load them back to back into moulder to give each piece the tongue and groove features. The first challenge to this project existed because there was no site check included in the quote as we would be provided with pictures and dimensions of everything we needed to complete the project from Mannington personnel. The second complexity of this project was that the laminated sheets weren't necessarily square or flat... the system would have to handle all scenarios without fault.

OPERATION:

• Individual ply's of wood were glued, pressed and stacked on another part of the line.
• A forklift operator would periodically need to load a new bunk of laminated sheets into one of the two unstacking units.
• Upon finishing one stack of laminated sheets, the unstacker had to automatically switch between units to ensure that there were no hiccups in the production line.
• The unstacker would unload one sheet at a time from the bunk onto a transfer conveyor.
• The transfer conveyor first has to align the sheet to a fixed fence before feeding a continuous supply of sheets into the gang rip saw.
• A secondary transfer conveyor would transport the strips of laminated flooring to the 90deg switch.
• The 90deg switch could send the strips to one of two moulding lines based on which way the switch drive motor turned.
• The strips would then be individually fed into each moulder.