Lumber handling and cutting apparatus
AssigneeIllinois Tool Works Inc.
InventorsRonald E. Findley, Mark K. Gipson
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
Various embodiments of the present disclosure provide a lumber handling and cutting apparatus, including an incoming material conveyor assembly, a material infeed assembly adjacent to the incoming material conveyor assembly, a cutting assembly adjacent to the material infeed assembly, a material outfeed assembly adjacent to the cutting assembly, an outgoing material conveyor assembly adjacent to the cutting assembly, and a printer assembly adjacent to the incoming material conveyor assembly and the material infeed assembly.
Claims20
A method of operating a lumber handling and cutting apparatus, the method comprising:
- feeding a lumber board on an incoming material conveyor assembly toward a printer assembly and toward a material infeed assembly, wherein the printer assembly includes a print head facing downwardly and configured to print on different size lumber boards;
- aligning, via a multi-size board alignment assembly, the lumber board with respect to the print head prior to the print head printing on the lumber board;
- detecting, via a print sensor, the lumber board relative to the print head;
- based on the detection of the lumber board relative to the print head, causing activation of the print head to print on the lumber board;
- at a point that the lumber board is over halfway underneath the print head and a center of gravity of the lumber board passes over a center of the multi-size board alignment assembly, allowing the lumber board to feed downwardly to the material infeed assembly;
- and
- feeding the lumber from the material infeed assembly to a cutting assembly adjacent to the material infeed assembly.
A method of operating a lumber handling and cutting apparatus, the method comprising:
- feeding a lumber board on an incoming material conveyor assembly toward a printer assembly and toward a material infeed assembly, wherein the printer assembly includes a print head facing downwardly and configured to print on different size lumber boards;
- aligning, via a multi-size board alignment assembly, the lumber board with respect to the print head prior to the print head printing on the lumber board;
- detecting, via a print sensor, the lumber board relative to the print head;
- based on the detection of the lumber board relative to the print head, causing activation of the print head to print on the lumber board;
- after the lumber board is aligned with the print head, causing the incoming material conveyor assembly to back the lumber board up before feeding the lumber board to the material infeed assembly;
- and
- feeding the lumber from the material infeed assembly to a cutting assembly adjacent to the material infeed assembly.
A method of operating a lumber handling and cutting apparatus, the method comprising:
- sequentially feeding a plurality of different size lumber boards having different dimensions on an incoming material conveyor assembly toward a printer assembly adjacent to the incoming material conveyor assembly and toward a material infeed assembly, the printer assembly including a multi-size board alignment assembly arranged at an end of the incoming material conveyor assembly;
- causing the multi-size board alignment assembly to sequentially align each of the plurality of different size lumber boards with respect to a print head of the printer prior to the print head sequentially printing on each of the plurality of different size lumber boards without adjusting a position of the print head and without reconfiguring the print head;
- and
- sequentially directing the plurality of different size lumber boards on the material infeed assembly to a cutting assembly.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.