Our tour began at National Lumber Company's office in Mansfield with coffee and pastries.
First destination - NLC's Reliable Truss Facility in New Bedford.
Several groups of 6-8 people toured different areas of the facility.
Fabrication begins in the design office
Lumber is cut according to shop drawings transmitted to the fabrication area via computer.
Pieces awaiting assembly into various components for 'just in time' fabrication.
The truss pieces are sent to this fabrication area where they are assembled with the aid of infrared lights from the ceiling cast onto the tables to show exactly where the parts go.
The truss plates are tapped into place...
The machine goes over the plates and tightly presses them to the truss.
The trusses are brought into the yard for delivery.
Metal trusses are also fabricated at this facility.
Fasteners are color coded for easy identification to be placed based on the required specifications.
Trusses can be fabricated to any specification with whatever lumber is required. There may be some suggestions for substitutions from NLC based on availability in an effort to keep the contractor's schedule flowing. For example, Douglas Fir is more difficult to obtain in the winter months due to shipping difficulty, but Southern Yellow Pine and Spruce Pine Fir are easily obtained.
This area of the tour is one of the steps in constructing walls panels. NLC's Reliable Truss facility not only fabricates trusses, it also fabricates wall and floor panels as well as specialty structures to any order.
All wall panels go through a minimum of 3 check points for square before final nailing.
Most of the fabrication is automatically generated by a drawing that is sent the fabrication floor - pieces are automatically sent to each step of the process to ensure correct fabrication.
The sheathing is placed on the panel according to the engineer's specification.
A nailing machine is programmed by the computer to nail at the proper locations and the proper spacing.
Any minor nailing corrections and quality control are made by hand.
Floor panel assembly area.
All NLC's joists are from Boise.
