78 | Feature: Kallfass
SUMMARY
■GELO Timber commissioned a small diameter sawmill
■Its main product is lamellas for glulam timber
■Kallfass supplied the sorting and stacking system
■It also installed a re-sorting system for kiln packages
GETS IT SORTED KALLFASS GELO Timber commissioned a state-of-the-art small diameter sawmill with a Kallfass box sorting system
In an investment totalling €38.5m, GELO Timber began the installation of a small diameter sawmill back in December 2019 at its 11ha site (seven of which are currently in use) at Wunsiedel in Germany. Despite all the adversities the Covid-19 pandemic presented, it proved possible to adhere to an already tight schedule and the first log was fed through the new line exactly a year later.
The main product, lamellas for glulam
timber, is primarily intended for the supply of glulam plants. Meanwhile, side boards that cannot be processed are supplied to packaging customers.
“In future, the sawmill will reduce purchasing considerably for its sites in Wunsiedel and Weissenstadt. However, 100% self-sufficiency is not possible,” explained
Wolf-Christian Küspert, managing director. Wunsiedel primarily proved attractive as a location because GELO Timber had WUN Bioenergie, a pellet producer and co- generation plant operator as a neighbour. But WUN Bioenergie is not just any neighbour: Mr Küspert is co-founder of the energy park and, additionally, a shareholder and managing director.
This creates attractive synergies with, in essence, sawmill waste being exchanged for electricity and heat, leading to Mr Küspert calling the sawmill the “Smart solution 4.0”.
The use of an electrically operated portal crane in the log yard contributes further to the smart solution concept. The trunks are handled and stacked in an eco-friendly manner in a very narrow space.
EFFICIENT USE OF RESOURCES The main criteria for the sawmill were the economic efficiency of the production, with few staff and a maximum of technological possibilities, along with a high production speed and short set-up times. The Wunsiedel sawmill cuts small diameters of 80-250mm and lengths of 2.5 to 5.3m and has been designed for an annual output of 350,000m3
in two shifts.
“That may not seem a lot at first glance, but more than 18 million linear metres of logs need to pass through the plant every year to achieve this output,” said Mr Küspert. “Our sawmill in Weissenstadt, where we process larger diameters, is only handling four million linear metres for an output of 250,000m3/per year.”
FULLY AUTOMATED Above: Kallfass box sorter with 40 inclined boxes TTJ | November/December 2021 |
www.ttjonline.com
Main and side boards are conveyed via a tilt destacker onto two separate decks towards the sorting and stacking system from Kallfass in Klosterreichenbach in Germany and fed through an unscrambler onto a curved conveyor. An operator visually assesses the timbers, decides whether a face section is necessary and pulls the board up to 0.5m from the conveyor. The cross conveyor is equipped with rollers that make handling of heavy boards extremely easy. Afterwards the boards are conveyed transversely towards the wane scanner and trimmer via a TongLoader. The TongLoader grips each piece in a manner similar to a hand, separates the board film, singulating and feeding it into the next conveyor with up to 120 cycles per minute. The wane scanner determines the dimension, detects the wane
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