Roller tables

[Crusarius]

I forgot about this thread. has anyone thought about an electric motor with a cam on it for directing boards? could be very simple, cheap and easy. and electric is pretty responsive in all temperatures.

[Resonator]

Only thing I can say for sure about roller tables is I grab everyone I can get my hands on.

I can attest that they come in very handy for sliding 38' foot long, 17" wide, soppin' wet sinker cypress boards. And cutting them to length and stacking. 

[caveman]

You, Daniel and Travis were hopping that day.  

On another note, the customer came by today to get his cypress and cedar.  He was stoked with the live edged cedar and even thought the cypress that sawed flat but rougher than normal, with the last screw-stike blade, would look perfect for the siding in his office.  He wanted to take a couple of blades with him for decorations in his shop.  He paid for them, and I was happy for him to take them away.

[moodnacreek]

There are many ways to convey boards and slabs away from the saw. Belts are great because they can do rough slabs upside down along with boards, timbers and sticks. Spiral rolls with flag stops allow you to unload at the flag or keep going to another and they can go on forever with more stops allowing one man to sort his entire production. One way is to first have a belt that can dump slabs first and transition to spiral rolls. The ability to move material away so you can keep sawing may inspire someone to build a conveyer to do that but that is only half of what needs to be done. You want to sort your wood at the same time.

[caveman]

Yesteday, while awaiting a phone call to go pick my mother up from the hospital in Tampa (she ended up getting released this morning), I hauled the mill out from under the shed.  While it was out, I used the box blade and dragged out a lot of sawdust, bark and other debris that had accumulated under the mill.  The mill got a good scrubbing and I put it back under the shed at a little different angle.  Now the radiator does not smash into a fan at full height while at the tongue end. 

One of the roller tables that we got a couple of weeks ago was placed near the mill.  I think it will help quite a bit but the guy who was tail gunning today was not patient enough to let the boards get back to the rollers, even when pulling back three 2x4's at a time.


 

[Magicman]

How do you handle your normal sawdust discharge?

[caveman]

We have a hose attached to the discharge chute that goes to an overhead blower/dust collector fan that discharges it outside of the shed.  I then move it with the tractor bucket.  We have not moved the mill in quite a while, so the bark and debris piled up under the mill.  Before we installed the blower, we would do a better job of cleaning under the mill.  I typically used a Council Fire Rake to rake out the bark and other stuff that would accumulate under the mill and a scoop shovel to clean up the sawdust.

The discharge chute for the blower is hidden behind the pole in the foreground of the picture even though it is on the other side of the shed.  We need a more robust blower but we only have 120 volts on two circuits feeding the sawmill shed, the solar kiln and the hot box (I have three other 220v blowers).

[Crusarius]

What about using multiple 110 blowers?

[caveman]

The little blower actually does pretty well unless we are sawing cypress and it can't keep up with the heavy, wet sawdust.  We may add one of the bigger blowers and just not run the fans in the solar kiln or the halogen lights in the hot box while sawing.  That little blower has saved us a lot of work at the end of a sawing day. 

[Magicman]

Cypress sawdust will clog the sawdust chute and is difficult to deal with no matter what.

[customsawyer]

Yup even my big blower doesn't like a steady diet of wet cypress sawdust from the mill. If I'm sawing a full day of it I just unhook the chute and blow it on the ground. If I try using the blower the 30' plus of inlet pipe will get plugged and has to be cleaned out. If it's just a couple of hours of it I will use it, knowing that whatever I'm sawing next will clean it out.

[moodnacreek]

One disadvantage of the traveling saw is sawdust discharge. With a carriage mill sawdust spills in a pit and you can have a blower or a drag chain or even an auger .

[customsawyer]

The problem with cypress is the amount of moisture in the sawdust. As those that were at the project can confirm you can't get any more water in that wood. As it gets in the sawdust chute/blower hose than it just starts sticking to everything. It will plug everything up in short order.

[Old Greenhorn]

After seeing what I saw, and for the first time ever to see it also, I would characterize more more like you had a lot of sawdust in your water.
 Geez some of those boards just had puddles on them as they were being stacked. I've milled soaking wet wood but never saw anything like that. It's almost a paste.

[caveman]

I just read through this whole thread again today.  I was looking for tips to improve efficiency as most of us have found that the milling of boards is just one step in a material handling process.

We have made a few changes since the inception of this thread that have improved our efficiency.  The roller tables I bought were 10' long.  The one positioned right behind the mill to handle the dragged back slabs, boards and flitches was recently cut into 4' and 6' tables.  This saves a lot of steps walking around a long table.  The last couple of times we've sawn, we sawed 8-10' logs so we positioned the shorter table at a 30° or so angle off to the side of the table behind the mill.  The slabs go to a slab rack I made a few months ago.  The boards are stacked according to size on steel sawhorses beside the roller table behind the mill, while flitches are sent in a linear direction towards the edger and are stacked on steel sawhorses or on square tubing on the ground.  Last week we stacked some wide 2" thick oak on the tubing on the ground.  That was a mistake as they did not lose weight down there.  

Our rinky dink operation is in continual evolution, but a few things we have incorporated lately have definitely improved efficiency and cut down on the manual labor.  
1.  Roller tables
2.  Telehandler
3.  Slab rack- it can be emptied with the fork or the whole thing can be hauled to the burn pile, dumped and retrieved using the forks without leaving the tractor or Lull seat.
4.  dust collector/blower attached to the discharge chute of the mill
5.  Edger- most recent addition.  This is truly a game changer for us.  The speed at which it produces accurate, straight boards from flitches is phenomenal.  
6.  I almost forgot about pallets.
7.  Stickers-  I've started sawing them at 1"x 1.25" and two inches longer than the lumber pallets are wide, so 44".

There are several more things we can do to further improve.  One will be an always available pull through area for trucks and trailers.  It is amazing how many people are incapable of backing the trailers that they haul.  We are really limited by space, but this has to happen.  Another will be concreting the floor of the mill shed to stack lumber.  We've about stopped stacking under the shed due to the hassle of leveling blocks for each stack of lumber.  Concrete has just gotten stupid expensive- time to buy and cry.  

I would be interested in seeing any other things y'all are doing that makes tough jobs easier.

[Stephen1]

I'd like to see your blower and where it goes. My biggest problem is sawdust in an industrial setting. I shovel it into a Uline bag and then take them to my property where I am building a sound barrier from the noise bikes blasting by. I think A blower with a hose right into the bag will work. I just got finished planing my cedar decking with my Dewalt735 which has a built in blower and I hooked a hose to it and into the bag. Worked great. Now I need to figure a blower and hose from the mill. 

[caveman]

 
Below are a couple of pictures of the little blower and the sawdust pile.
 

I need to clean out under the mill again soon.  We also should concrete under the shed but the price of concrete is outrageous right now.  It will take 15 yards3.

[Magicman]

You have a nice setup for your locale Kyle.  Let the breezes blow.  Yes, tidying is always a constant but worthwhile endeavor, but part of the job. 

[Stephen1]

That looks like a great little setup. I setup and take down my mill almost everyday as it sits in the parking lot of an industrial complex. I need to see where I can hang a hose to the mill, maybe a sky hook, I did not mind the sawdust from the hardwood salvage logs, but I have been doing quite a bit of EWP B&B siding and it is getting to be a pain to keep shovelling. I on the look out for used roller tables.