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Southern Cross sling sorts out AKD

National Forests & Timber, August 2001

Since the installation of our Southern Cross sling sorter we have increased capacity to sort out the speed of the Coastal planer. This can run at 380 lineal metres per minute for some products and the sling sorter handles the product well, said John Hayden, operations manager, AKD Softwoods at Colac in Victoria.

The whole installation took only three weeks to build and during that period we by-passed the sorter and manually stacked product. The commissioning came in on time and budget and we have been very happy with the way everything has been running. Southern Cross sent over two engineers and then hired local people to assist with the construction on site.

The system is a fifteen bay sling sorter which replaced a two layer tray sorter. The whole plant was manufactured in New Zealand by Southern Cross, assembled and tested prior to disassembly and dispatch to Australia.

We retained the existing grading station that we had for the tray sorter as we have found the shark fin board turner very effective and we have two graders at this station.

The graders sort for length and grade on each cross-section during production. There may be three acceptable grades and a regrade as well as up to five lengths. The regrade goes out to the Paul Optimising docker and is recovered.

Sorts go out to the bay chosen by the computer and there is a piece tally set for each pack. When the tally level for two packs is reached for this sort, the computer then selects an empty bay and the system directs the sort to this new bay, John explained.

As the automatic stacker completes a pack, the operator will let the next sling down onto the horizontal transfer which is two split reversible decks.

These are designed to allow for two packs on each and the pieces are then fed out to the automatic stacker to the binding system supplied by IWD Strapping and the wrapping station.

The electronic controls of the sling sorter were installed by R&L Engineering from Albany Georgia, USA who are pocket control specialists. They are a specialist software company that has developed control programs for sorters, said Kevin Sibley marketing manager for Southern Cross.

The base design for the installation was supplied by our American principal, and Southern Cross then converted the structural design and metricated the design in New Zealand. Consequently, spare parts for the metric components are now readily available anywhere in Australia and New Zealand.

John Hayden said, One of the features of this installation is that the electronic controls which tally the pieces into the slings, interfaces with our Timber Industry Management & Marketing System (TIMMS) software package which was supplied by Disprax in Melbourne and became operational on site in January 2001.

The bay sorter tallies the two packs per bay and the information is downloaded into the TIMMS system which stores then processes the information, stores it, prints labels for the packs and provides live stock information live to the sales department as it is produced. There is a screen by the grading station where each board can be observed to see the length grade and the stock position at the time.

The result is that our production manager can sit at his desk and watch on his computer screen how production is progressing at any point of time.

TIMMS system is a Windows based system that is user friendly. The introduction of the TIMMS into our system has progressed very smoothly. It is a fantastic aid to management to have reliable information coming forward at any time of the day.

The whole system is modular and gives individual pack tallies and this is incorporated with the accounting system to facilitate invoicing and payment preparation and records.

We have been very pleased with the way everything has gone with this project, although it was not really a surprise as we had inspected other successful work which Southern Cross had completed at mills around New Zealand.

The sling sorter is going well, now the only thing left to be done is to install the final element which we incorporated as part of the design at a later stage. This is a system to drop studs down onto a conveyor and have them cross-cut on a Cut-in-two saw. This will also be installed by Southern Cross in a few weeks. The cross-cut studs will come out into the packing shed on a conveyor and transfer and packs will be made up and wrapped.

The Southern Cross sling sorter was price competitive against other systems and was able to be installed quickly. Other features that appealed were the fact that it could be installed over the existing grading transfer and there is less potential damage to boards. The drop into the sling is only minimal and the sling also allows for a soft drop onto the horizontal transfer, John Hayden said in conclusion.

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