GELO Production
How our products are made
Thanks to a special, unique technology, GELO is able to deliver conventional mass-produced goods as well as construction timber of any dimension and length.
We can satisfy all customers’ requests from the smallest board to the longest beam. And we deliver everything in our acknowledged GELO quality!
Station 1: Round Timber Yard
Here, the fully automatic processing begins. The trees are placed on a conveyor system, separated, reduced by the roots, and debarked.
The next step is the automatic measurement of the log: to what degree is it curved, how long is it, and what’s the diameter? Furthermore, a cross cut indicates whether the timber is healthy or not. The separator grades the timber and decides which log is assigned to which order based on measurement values and according to the current orders situation. On the 222 meter sorting line, the logs are then sorted into order-related boxes.
Station 2: Crane Installation
Our two cranes (one for the daily production process, one for peak periods) form the interface between the round timber yard and the sawline.
Rising eight meters in the air, the crane is able to deliver 35 to 40 transport movements per hour with a peak load of up to 10 tons per lift. This way, 4 000 tons of timber can be handled every day during an operation time of 16 hours. The logs and round timber sections can be placed by the crane directly on the sawline – there are no intermediate steps or any kind of storage between the order box at the round timber yard and the processing at the sawline.
3. Station: GELO Sawline
The absolutely customer- and order-oriented production gives GELO a competitive edge. Our optimized production can of course only be guaranteed with a flexible and versatile processing system.
Therefore, we are proud of our sawline that enables us to work sequentially, log by log, regardless of the timber’s dimensions. The fully flexible sawline is able to continuously adjust the speed for every single work piece from 30 up to 120 meters per minute. Up to 25 logs per minute can be handled at full speed.
4. Station: Edging and Sorting
On the edges of the side boards that have been cut off in the sawline, a thin layer of bark is still present: The so called “wane.” The waney-edged boards are automatically edged and separated in the board edger.
For this purpose, the boards pass through an infrared scanner that measures the bright/dark profile of each board. A computer uses the results to determine the greatest possible, usable (meaning “bright”) rectangular area. 11 circular saws then cut the boards according to the calculated length and width.
The sorting plant follows directly after the board edger in the production process. Here, only the side boards are automatically sorted according to the criteria length, thickness, width, wood species, and quality. The sorted material is placed into separate boxes, and the content of full boxes is automatically combined to standard packages stacked with boards in between. Up to eight layers of side boards can be stacked per minute. Thus, a finished package can leave the sorting plant every five minutes.
5. Station: Drying
One of the most used methods of timber finishing is drying.
The timber can be dried either in certified fresh air/exhaust air chambers or in the vacuum to a final moisture content of 18 percent. The advantages of the vacuum dry kiln in comparison to regular drying are speed and superior results, because vacuum-dried timber clearly exhibits less cracking.
Naturally, we dry timber to any moisture content our customers need.
Impregnation
Impregnation of the timber makes it more durable and more resistant to external influences such as weather conditions and parasites.
In order to achieve this effect, the timber is immersed in special chemical solutions that are nontoxic to humans. We use the product “IMPRALIT TSK 10” of the company Rüttgers Organics during the dipping impregnation.
IPCC Heat Treatment
As a further refinement, GELO Timber Industries, being one of the first sawmills that is IPPC-certified, offers the so called “heat treatment.”
This new standard, replacing the former Australian SIREX-certificate, has only been in existence for a short time. Such a treatment is particularly desired in the production of export packings and packaging means.
6. Station: Finishing
a) KVH Production
GELO started operations at the new KVH factory on June 1, 2006.
The production of high-quality construction timber was started after almost complete installation of the new production plant in Weißenstadt. KVH goes through a number of production processes. Cutting on a high-performance plant, piling, technical drying, calibration, lopping and commissioning are the main steps on the way to produce high-quality KVH. A quality check is performed between the individual steps in each case.
6. Station: Finishing
B) Planing
Apart from drying and impregnation, timber can also be improved by planing its surface. We have a modern planing works that – comparable to our sawline – is able to fully flexible process the different kinds of timber.
The planer individually adapts to each size of the work pieces, thus making a time-consuming changeover between single work pieces no longer necessary.
For fast mass-produced goods, there is also another planing line available: With the so called Hydromat, the usual export products, for example German rough-planed timber, can be manufactured.
7. Station: Quality Control
Despite a completely automated manufacturing, the manual quality control of our goods is of the highest priority.
Therefore, none of our wood products leave the company without being examined by our trained specialists. Each package is subject to thorough inspection: It is checked for completeness as well as quality. Only if the product meets our high quality standards, the package is autographed by the inspector.
