MANUFACTURE

Manufacture of glued laminated timber (glulam) and beam

The scheme of up-to-date profiled glued timber production is as follows:

Logs are cut into boards of necessary dimensions. As in course of the log cutting internal stress is eliminated, the timber has no crack formation, no crooking, no change of its form during exploitation.

Every board undergoes technical drying under the computer control to 10-12% humidity. That is why the glued timber house has practically no shrinkage and after it is assembled one may straight away commence the decoration works.

The dried boards are calibrated on the planning machines and cut along the length into the workpieces. This operation allows uncovering the hidden defects of the wood, which are eliminated, and that is why the glued timber houses have no such disadvantages of wood as cracking, crooking, light knots.

The rest of the areas free of defects are jointed along the length with mini-spud into boards (lamellas) and are peeled off for a class smoothness.

Then ready lamellas upon the glue drying out are calibrated on four-sided longitudinally milling machines, and only after this the lamellas are glued into the timber on the special hydraulic presses. For gluing lamellas to each other the special bicomponent eco-friendly glue is used complying with DIN EN 204 international standard, D4 class (Akzo Nobel, Sweden), not preventing wood’s capability ‘to breath’.

Another peculiarity of glued timber is the fact that while gluing into one timber the direction of wood fibres, or, as they are also called ‘annual rings’ in the lamellas are set into opposite directions. This makes glued timber stronger if compared with the usual one, and in case of humidity changes it does not change its form.

After lamellas are glued into a single timber, it is profiled on the four-sided machines. This is one of the most responsible moments of the production – on the precision of ‘stud-groove’ joint depends the quality of timber on the whole, and, in the long run, the quality of the future house.

After the glued timber acquires profile, it is butted in the dimensions – with high precision is cut into the elements of necessary size.

The closing stage of the timber production is making ‘incisions’ of crowning cups on the special cup-cutting machine and marking according to specification. Packing of marked spareparts into pallets according to the specifications.

The glued timber house will arrive at the construction site in the form of the set ready to raising with each element marked – thus, the house is erected as a construction kit, and does not require time-consuming carpenter’s work.

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