Cullen Ellis, Spida USA Product Specialist explains 'how'.
As all prefabricated wall panel manufacturers know, you are always trying to predict the amount of wall panels required for your business daily. You need to know what their true cost is and when they will be delivered to your customer, and all of this needs to happen efficiently and on time.
With a Spida wall panel line, we give you the ability to do this on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis, because our software is up to the challenge!
Improve your output
Once you have our machinery in place, it becomes easy to determine how many lineal feet you will be achieving per shift, and then it allows you to target the areas of your line that might be letting your production numbers down. Improving your output today allows for continued growth and more market share.
Most workstations on the Spida wall panel/frame line keep the operator in a small work zone, so the material – not the worker – is doing all the moving. This innovation creates a much leaner and more controllable process, and it lets the machinery do all the heavy lifting and work so that your staff can focus on building the walls.
Benefit from intuitive software and ease of operation
All computer-operated Spida machines, with our outstanding software and processes, are very intuitive and easy to operate. Weeks of training are a thing of the past; employees learn how to properly frame a wall in a day or two as the majority of the thinking is done by our machinery. In these tough times when skilled labor is at an all-time low and attrition rates are going in the opposite direction, smart, safe machinery will give you an advantage now and well into the future. As the industry ebbs and flows bringing a work force back to full capacity using Spida machinery is far easier than having to train new workers how to manually frame and build walls – our machinery just doesn’t have a sick day or go on leave.
Couple the frame line with a Spida saw
Our frame line is not the only smart start you need in your factory, coupling the frame line with a smart saw is just good thinking. Efficiency should be seen as much as possible through the entire process of building a wall panel – I constantly stress to those people looking to either get into wall panels or improve what they have that they should buy a saw with ink jet marking capabilities. Spida’s complete Sprint saw range gives you accurate cuts, component labeling, and labelled locations as well as utilizing some market-leading optimization software to reduce waste while keeping components in organized, usable bundles.
When paired with an extruder (the start of the frame line), it is not entirely necessary to mark the plates as the extruder provides accurate placement of all components. However, being able to mark locations for subcomponents such as cripples and jacks, without using a tape measure and in the blink of an eye, is invaluable. The operator at your subcomponent station now easily nails together complete door and window assemblies with no need for time-consuming layouts using a tape and pencil. You now have a worker with more time for other work!
The value of an extruder
Servo-driven, encoder positioning – of the frames and wall parts – coupled with precise and efficient pneumatic placement of nails gives accurate component locations and repeatable nail patterns. These features of the Spida extruder along with multiple safety features make the centerpiece of any Spida wall panel line able to provide a constant throughput of wall panels only limited by the operator’s ability to feed components into the machine. Coupled with stud feeding systems such as the Curved Conveyor and automated subcomponent in-feeds for windows and doors, this system gives you the ability to “feed the beast” and get the most out of your machine.
A new innovative clamping system, now available from Spida, allows the plate clamps to hover just over the plates, which further improves the speed and safety of the extruder. The development of the Raked Wall Extruder is now also complete, allowing raking walls to be pulled through the machine, and the height automatically adjusts as the wall makes its way through the frame phase. We have a video on the website of the Raked Wall Extruder, go and have a look for yourself.
Perfectly sheathed walls
The set and forget, file-driven sheather, with its “one touch activation,” enables an entire wall to nail off, without the operator being present. The operator simply loads the wall to the pins and presses go – returning only to unload the now sheathed wall and load the next wall into the machine. Just like the extruder, the Spida sheather bridge is stationary, and the wall is pulled through the machine. This also gives Spida the ability to grab the stud from underneath – straightening out any bowed stud – before the gun runs, leading to a very low percentage of “shiners” which are present on other sheathing machines.
The latest innovation to our Sheathing Line is now the integrated saws. The Sheather 5 Gun 2 Saw provides cutting tabs rather than complete cuts, making wall panels easier to transport and reducing waste at your factory as the cuts are punched out on the construction site. See the Sheather 5 Gun 2 Saw in action.
Gain efficiencies with a Spida wall frame line
Customers who have purchased a Spida Machinery Framing Line are often so pleased that they furnish their plants with multiple Spida lines. In fact, many of our customers have a raking line and a common wall framing line – the benefits of which are reflected in their production numbers.
Producing numbers of 22–27 lineal feet of wall per man hour for interior walls and 11–15 lineal feet per man hour on exterior walls, including cutting and stacking for both interior and exterior – these are the numbers that make the Spida Framing Line a very attractive proposition for anyone looking to get into walls or increase efficiencies in their current process.
