Posted on December 20, 2016

Arbec regroups seven softwood plants (sawing, planing and finger-jointing), which are cornerstones of Groupe Rémabec’s manufacturing division. Arbec plants provide a yearly timber production capacity of 700 million board feet. They modernized their planer mill in St-Séverin (Qc) with an investment of more than 2 million for the re-launch. They employ 52 people and transform 190 million board feet of wood into pieces of various sizes: 1"X 3", 1"X 4", 2"X 3", 2"X 4", 2"X 6" and from 60" to 120" PET in 7 different grades and 3 species (SPF).

To achieve this, Arbec sought out to minimize its business risk and orient itself towards a turnkey type of agreement. The scope of the project was to replace the plant’s equipment controls starting with the unscrambler, the planer infeed transfer, the planer area, the lug loader, the multi-saw trimmer, the lumber sorter, the emptying of the bins, the stacker infeed/outfeed section; but the main equipment to justify the financial viability of the project was the implementation of a grade optimizer.

Autolog was founded thirty years ago in 1987, supplying products with an authentic and customer-oriented approach, and with controls for lumber sorters, stackers and other equipment related to the sawmill and the planer. This philosophy has never wavered over time. It has always been both important and beneficial for the company to offer quality controls and optimization solutions to the mills as an indivisible whole to reduce the risk of conflicts between suppliers, facilitating problem resolution and reducing loss of time when completing contracts.

A secret well hidden from the competition, Autolog is far from being a “rookie” in the more complex type of projects and competes admirably well with companies of larger size due to its flexibility, the quality of its project managers and its harmonious relationship with its suppliers.

Autolog won the bid and become the primary contractor for the entire project which included the risk management for the project, the optimization and automation solutions, and installation of the mechanical and electrical equipment.

Their chosen partners for the equipment were Carbotech and the Electro Beauce Inc. group, two firms whose value system and customer orientation are similar to those of Autolog. All controls for the Arbec project were provided on an Allen-Bradley platform, a standard PLC used in the lumber industry throughout North America and fully mastered by Autolog. In this project, the processors used were the L72 and L71 model.

The major component for financial justification was Autolog’s ProGrader linear planer optimizer, recognized as a benchmark system in North America, with over thirty systems installed in the last three years. It is renowned for its most reliable and avant-garde technologies in the industry, not only for its 3D sensors but for its vision and use of a dual laser tracheid scanner.

Its established intrinsic qualities were a deciding factor in Arbec’s choice of supplier. In fact, the ProGrader allows for the synchronized reading of all scanner heads of the four faces of the board at 90 degrees. The capture of all characteristics, both physical and cosmetic, occurs without the obstruction of the chains and benefits from the constant stability of the boards which is ensured by infeed/outfeed roll modules that reduce the effect of vibration/wobbling.

Calibration and maintenance is carried out quickly and reduces downtime. Similarly, in the computer room, a real-time tracking system powered by a powerful control computer, a video camera and equipment that measures G force impact in real-time, allows the operator to intervene quickly in order to reduce the costs of errors during start-up and normal day to day operations.

However, the moment of truth for measuring the success of any turnkey installation comes with the quality of implementation and realization that the complete project is delivered on schedule, according to the specifications, while respecting the initial budget.

Only ten weeks elapsed between the initial shut down of the mill to the signature of the acceptance tests, all carried out according to a well respected and agreed upon plan.

The ProGrader linear planer optimizer with its retractable scanner module, the infeed/outfeed dual press rolls systems and the UV code cabinet (to the left) fit perfectly in the existing building.

The top/bottom UV code printer module features super heavy duty print head protection. Each head prints 3 identical codes on each side of the boards making a non-readable board code impossible.

The contract was a turnkey project for Autolog. All the controls were replaced with state-of the art PLC technology and included the VFD’s, start-up and training. The controls of the lug loader, trimmer/sorter and the stacker were included in the project.