Solid Wood Products 



2637 



UNSCRAMBLER 



POWER UNIT 

 DIESEL OR 

 ELECTRIC 



Figure 22-37. — Production line for feeding cants, crosscutting them to deckboard or 

 stringer length, gong-ripping them into boards, and stacking the boards. (Photo from 

 EZ Manufacturing Company.) 



From thick veneer. — A bolt cut to deckboard length and rounded up as 

 shown in figures 18-104C and 18-252, can be peeled into thick veneer (figs. 18- 

 250 and 251) for parallel lamination into two-ply or three-ply deckboards. Hann 

 et al. (1971) examined the economics of such an operation and concluded that 

 pallet deckboards can be fabricated from red oak bolts by a process that com- 

 bines rotary-knife cutting, press-drying, and gluing immediately after drying in 

 a total processing time (log to dried pallet deckboard) of approximately 15 

 minutes. Yield of deckboards in their study was about 80 percent of log volume. 

 They suggested that such a plant should be sized to produce daily enough 

 deckboards for about 2,000 warehouse and exchange pallets. 



Notching of stringers. — Stringer notches (see figure 22-24) are cut at high 

 production rate by continuously feeding stringers transversely (and on edge) past 

 peripheral-milling shaper-type cutterheads that cut the two notches in one pass. 

 For plants requiring lower rates of production, machines are available that clamp 

 the stringers singly and route or shape the two notches. 



Chamfering of deckboards. — Many pallet designs call for chamfered lower 

 deckboards (fig. 22-24) to ease entry of lift-truck forks. These chamfers are cut 

 with shaper heads on hopper- fed machines. 



PALLET ASSEMBLY 



Hand assembly. — Stringers and deckboards can be manually assembled into 

 pallets with no more equipment than hammers, nails, and an assembly table. To 

 replace hand hammers, air-operated tools are available for rapidly driving nails 

 and/or staples up to 3-V2 inches in length; although easy to maintain and use, 

 they require more expensive fasteners than bulk-purchased hammer-driven fas- 

 teners. If equipped with air-operated nail guns, two people should be able to 

 assemble at least 160 GPC warehouse pallets (fig. 22-24) per 8-hour shift for a 

 production rate of 10 pallets per man-hour (Nelson 1975). 



