Engineered wood plant is nation's newest

The new mill is gradually ramping-up production, and is now running at about 60%, according to Mr Murphy. His design calls for 4.5 million ft³ annually, or about 400,000ft³ monthly. It is operating two shifts with 60 employees. A third shift will add 25 more. It was all an inhouse project, said plant manager Greg Gassner, a 20-year Murphy veteran. The mill was planned entirely within the company, which was also general contractor on the job. Such work as concrete, earth and electricals were sub-contracted, mostly to local firms. The mill is an important asset for the small town of Sutherlin, which has a population about 7,300. Murphy's project started in November 2006. "The wettest November since…", Mr Gassner declared. "It seems like forever, when you're up to here in mud." Oregon winters can be wet. The new building housing production equipment covers 215,000ft². Fire spared the shipping warehouse and maintenance shop. Raute supplied the entire production line - its newest - and outsourced a few machines. Mr Murphy is most pleased with the installation. Mr Gassner said LVL is not designed for aesthetics, it's "a structurally designed product built for structural strengths, for such uses as beams, headers, flange stock and I-joists". The new mill has no peeling line. The veneer supply is all shipped in, mainly from Murphy's own plants. That veneer goes to a Raute six-deck, three-zone jet dryer by way of an automatic feeder and then goes out through automatic off-bearing and through the Metriguard and a Mecano VDA camera vision automatic grader with scanners and light bars. These units determine strength and grade. Next is a Raute 12-bin automatic sorter/stacker line. Suitable veneer for LVL use is separated from the other grades, which are packaged and warehoused for sale. Regular customers buy veneer every week. The lay-up line employs phenolic glue, which Murphy mixes with Hexion supplies as it feels this gives better control. The glue is spread with a curtain coater. The veneer goes to a flying saw, then to a Raute pre-press from where the billets proceed to the Raute 90ft, four-opening hot press. Mr Gassner says experiments continue on pressure, temperatures and cycle times. "We can run some fairly exotic press cycles. We continue to explore pressure settings and we can run different temperatures at different stages. It isn't like the old presses," he recalls. Billets are pressed in 11'2in, 13'4in, and 31'2in thicknesses and in lengths from 32 to 66ft. From the Raute outfeed, the billets individually cycle through an EWS blow detector and transfer individually via a vacuum crane to a transfer chain. A 13-ton overhead crane loads them for transfer to a Paul billet saw where arbors are set up for rip width and edges are eased. The product is stamped, goes through the sealing line, where top, bottom and all four edges are sealed, and then to the stackers where bundles are accumulated for the automatic packager. Here they are bar code tagged, and then fork lifted outside to the shipping area. Some customers have changed over from rail to truck shipment which means they carry less inventory. A rail spur runs beside the plant. Mr Murphy described the wood supply for the new EWP mill. "We have veneer plants with dryers at White City, Oregon and Selma, Washington. We bought the Selma mill from Weyerhaeuser last August in a strategic move for Sutherlin. We wanted to get into a wood basket with Douglas fir with the strength characteristics of our Sutherlin plant," he said. "Washington Department of Natural Resources, has a lot of state land around that mill. We're not an exporter, so we are able to use that material in the veneer plant. Maybe 60% of our wood for Sutherlin comes from Elma. We get 30% from White City and we buy some on the outside." Describing the new mill, Mr Murphy commented: "We haul some veneer with our own trucks. We take 70 truckloads a week and supply 80 to 90% of it ourselves. We're using all Douglas fir now, from 1'8in through 1'6in".