Performance increase thank to highly precise High-Performance Finger Joint Cutter
Quality through quantity
The popular belief that quality and quantity exclude each other, is not shared by all companies. On the contrary. A LEUCO customer attaches great importance to high quality. And thanks to the purchase of new finger joint cutter sets productivity has been increased with constant product quality.
Working in shifts, the customer produces scantlings from pine wood, spruce and larch for window and door production The annual production amounts to 20,000 cbm of scantlings which are delivered to window and door manufacturers all over Europe and Scandinavia.
Scantlings are non-structural elements. They are composed of different wood parts, parts with cracks, knots, color differences etc. are cut off and only faultless sections are used. This is why scantlings are of especially high quality. The jointing of the single wood sections is made by finger joints. The finger joints are made by means of finger joint cutters. The finger joint bottom is without gaps.
Scantling quality means tight joints without chippings.
Productivity and process safety
Before, the edge life of a finger joint cutter on the finger jointing line of the customer amounted to approx. 10,000 to 12,000 cutting cycles. Thanks to the consequent collaboration with tool manufacturers, the customer could increase the edge life to 35,000 to 45,000 cutting cycles. However, this was not enough for the customer.
"Further increase of the edge life with constant high finger jointing quality" was the objective. Since the beginning of this year, a new generation of brazed high-performance finger joint cutters in real Z = 6 design has been applied on the finger jointing line. In addition, the edges of the so-called compound tool have a hard material coating. With the finger joint cutter lamellas of 80-150 mm width and up to 6 m length were cut. The result is overwhelming - the edge life was almost doubled from 40,000 tables to 79,000 tables with the impressive speed of 8 tables per minute.
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Exact finger joints
The tight closing joints do not show chippings at the end of the edge life like they would normally appear when the cutters get blunt. Even with lamella widths of 150 mm exact finger joints can be produced. Thanks to the exact finger joint the jointing of single parts can be done without offset.
Tool quality is hidden in the details
The extraordinary performance of the cutter could only be reached thanks to the tool body made from high-tensile steel, precisely ground finger jointing profile and the hard material coating which was adapted to the application. The elasticity of the cutting edge which reduces the risk of tooth breakage is obtained thanks to the cutting material HS. The hard material coating increases the hardness of the cutting edge, wear is slowed down which doubles the edge life.
The compact design causes perceivably smooth running. The new narrow spiral design of the brazed finger joint cutter is perfectly suited for short woods without running the risk that single wood pieces are drawn into the machine.
Not only material and construction separate the wheat from the chaff, i.e. the cheap tool from the premium tool.
The production process too, has its share. The quality of the complete system also depends on process-safe solder connections, hubs ground in the micrometer range, high balancing quality and the sharpening know-how. The scantling manufacturer adopted a clear position in the described application case and made a decision in favour of a high-quality finger joint cutter.
The benefit is obvious: almost doubling of the edge life with constant high quality. In addition, they benefit from the increased edge life: less machine downtimes, less motor output and less waste caused by blunt cutters etc.
The production manager too, knows that there is more illusion than reality in the case of cheap products.
"High volume output on a high quality level can only be obtained with quality products: Quantity through quality."
Download and pictures
Perfect quality with high throughput: Tight closing finger joints with 10 mm after more than 60,000 cutting cycles.
High Performance Finger Joint Cutters Z 6+6 with hard material coated cutting edges
Scantling production