HOMAG Canada Inc. Blog

Industry-wide material handling is being considered a non-value adding necessity in production. This is merely due to the fact that the material handling process does not add any monetary value to the final product. Usually cutting or nesting the raw material is the first value added process in panel processing.

When you consider however that the average saw or CNC operator spends just as much time looking for the right material as for processing it one might wonder whether smart material handling solutions shouldn’t be considered value-adding after all.

Thriving to get the most production out of your manufacturing equipment Bargstedt developed yet another smart storage and retrieval system. The new TLF210 is based on its successful bigger brother TLF410 and is tailored towards small and medium size wood-working businesses at a competitive price point.

The TLF210 is an intelligent storage and retrieval system that optimizes its stock based on the requirements of your company. Raw material is stored in stacks on the floor. These stacks can either be with all the same material and size or chaotic with various materials and sizes. The TLF210 knows at all times where each sheet is located and optimizes the position based on material type and usage. This means that heavy runners are placed automatically close to the saw and/or CNC machine in order to optimize the efficiency on those machines. The main goal is to eliminate idle time on your production equipment.

While supplying the production machines with raw material has the highest priority the system utilizes the time in-between to store/load new material into the system from the infeed place and to optimize the panel positions based on usage and demand. At night most companies have the system pre-stack panels in sequence for the next production day close to the saw/CNC.

The high performance software that drives the TLF210 is called woodStore. In addition to the control of the storage and retrieval system woodStore also visualizes the content of the system in 3D and allows easy to use functionality to work efficiently with your inventory. woodStore can be controlled either from the control panel of the TLF210 or through your saw and/or CNC machine that is connected to the system.

Based on the production order (cut lists / nesting sequence) the TLF210 will supply each manufacturing machine just in time. Offcuts can be automatically re-introduced into the system. This means in a setting with a Holzma panel saw that the program fence of the saw will pull back the offcut and hand it over to the TLF210. No additional handling is required.

In most situations offcuts will have priority in future optimization runs. This aids to keep the total amount of off-cuts at a bare minimum while significantly increasing performance and yield.

The system is capable of handling all common board sizes like 4×8, 5×10, 5×12 as well as larger sheets and smaller offcuts. With its re-designed two beam bridge the TLF210 is now able to handle weights up to 250kg and is available with a span of up to 12m and a length of up to 50m.

Storage and retrieval systems are extremely flexible in terms of layout and design, whether it is a saw, a nesting machine or the combination of both that need to be integrated or whether there are specific limitations due to existing building structure.

If you would like to find out more information on storage and retrieval systems or if you would like to discuss material handling challenges in your manufacturing environment please don’t hesitate to contact David Mauer david.mauer@homag-canada.ca.

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