Glulam

Since glulam is a lightweight material, the products are easily shipped on land by truck ( up to 28m in length) and trains, or by sea. Moreover, this advantage allows for some savings with erection and on building foundations.

The most reliant manufacturing process at present (ISO 9001 Assured) makes use of top of the line CNC machinery, employing laser eye sensors in order to achieve the highest precision in positioning and accuracy, thereby producing sophisticated materials whilst eliminating downtimes.

Working with the most advanced software programs, producers are able to achieve new cross sectional shapes and can further aim at endeavors to innovate designs and structures in the future.

We can breakdown the production of glulam into five main stages:

Drying

Kiln-drying the material sets the beginning of glulam production process: the objective is to obtain best stability, as well as bond strength. The wooden lamellas are dried separately before having them glued together, thus ensuring that the glulam wood is dried at the optimum wood moisture, which is approximately 12%. Moreover, by having dried the lamellas befor the gluing process, the internal stress generated by the following dying process is significantly reduced, diminishing the risk of cracks emerging.

Grading

Machine sorting arranges the dried elements, distinguishing by strength and aspect. An advanced Woodeye-Scanner is employed for discovering any defects in the process of grading, thus assuring for the strength of the elements as well as for their overall look. Therfore, imperfections such as ingrown bark or knots are cut away with precision.

Finally, the elements are distributed under four strength classes, differentiated by bulk density, knots occurence, and bending E-Module. Moreover, the grading process is based on DIN 4047, and as such it is meeting the EN 14081 required regulations for grading.

Finger Jointing

Manufacturing allows for the production of cross-sections of up to 3 meters in heght, at a maximul length of 65 meters. Different strength classes may be used to achieve maximal efficiency in beams. Once grading is effectuated, the lamellas are going through a specialized finger-jointing machine, that moulds and glues togheter the finger joints under heavy pressure. When this process is finished, the lamellas will be planed so they gain the desired thickness and will be cut at specified lengths.

Gluing

The glulam will be placed within hydraulic jigs: a mixture top-performance adhesives is used for the laminates’ faces, where by multiple side by side jigs shapes come through. This as they are, at approximately 0.3mm, the glue joints are barely visible even to the more trained eyes. As multiple trials and measurements testify, emmisions of the glues involved in this process are well fitted within the EN14080 standard for glulam. In addition, the standard glulam meets the F0 class emission requirements.

CNC processing

CNC machinery, set on a 40 meters long and up to six meters wide frame, is used in order to setup the metalwork’s templates and connection points. After the beams are planed and a smooth surface is achieved, a wide frame, able to make rotations through five axes, automatically picks the necessary tools. Since the CAM file is generated automatically, the specific operations are executed with great precision. If fitting and necessary, final surfaces can be pre-coated.