Investment in the future: Double-end tenoner for a new production line

Tschopp Holzindustrie AG in Buttisholz produces up to 6,000 shuttering panels per day, or over 1.5 million square metres of panels per year. In August last year, a new double-end tenoner from SCM, the Celaschi p60, was successfully installed. "Our double-end tenoner is part of a production line at Tschopp Holzindustrie AG and is responsible for profiling the lengthwise edges of the shuttering panels," says Daniel Ott, Country Manager Switzerland, SCM Switzerland (Rothenburg).

Healthy growth, continuous development, continuity, long-term thinking and fairness have characterised the history of the Tschopp Holzindustrie AG family company since 1920, now spanning three generatiotransvens. As stated from the Managing Directors Ronald and Daniel Tschopp,
 

"We think and act with foresight and sustainability. Thus, we focus fully consciously on the needs of our local business partners.".
 

Wood pellets and green electricity

The company has been producing high quality wood pellets since 2005, thanks its many years of experience.

The plant has a capacity of 130,000 tonnes of pellets per year and is the largest in Switzerland. The manufacturing process is highly automated and permanently monitored. In addition to their own waste wood, the company also processes untreated waste wood – such as wood shavings, sawdust and wood chips – from Swiss wood processing companies and sawmills, converting it into wood pellets.

The heat requirement for drying the waste wood is provided by the company's own wood-fired power plant. The bark from their sawmill, as well as used shuttering panels and recycled wood from their customers, are used as fuel for the plant. A perfect wood cycle – CO2 neutral. With a total storage capacity of 16,000 tonnes in bulk and in 15 kg bags, the company is a reliable supplier to the energy industry.

In addition to the bark from their sawmill, recycled wood of classes A1 and A2 in uncrushed form is used as fuel for the wood-fired power plant. The recycled wood is efficiently and professionally transformed into high-quality fuel for the power plant.

Tschopp offers their customers disposal services for their used materials. This means that the products come back and are recycled to produce energy. In total, the business converts 18,000 tonnes of recycled wood into ecological energy every year, in addition to the bark. The electricity, sustainably produced using an ORC turbine, is fed into the local supply grid. The waste heat from the turbine is used entirely to dry the sawn timber for the panel plant and the residual wood for the pellet production.

Furthermore, some apartment buildings are supplied with heat via a pipeline.

Intensive use, temperature fluctuations and the effects of the weather take an enormous toll on a shuttering panel. Klaus Lindner, Manager of the Panel Plant: "Our shuttering panels have a longer service life thanks to innovative technology and unique construction techniques."
 

The advantages are quantitatively high production results (both as a stand-alone version and as an integrated version in highly productive lines benefitting from the workpiece transport system with feed speed up to 60 m/min), the great variety of machining operations, as well as easy and rapid programming, thanks to the eye-M-PRO touch screen control panel and the Maestro active square machine software.

Two operating units are installed at each machine side for profiling operation. In fact, the machine is equipped with two high-precision electrospindles 4 kW for scoring operation, with CNC horizontal and vertical adjustment, and two hogging units with high-precision electrospindles 13,2 kW with CNC horizontal adjustment.
 

No unforeseen surprises

The project was started by Tschopp Holzindustrie AG in 2019. "The planning went smoothly and the binding delivery and assembly date (2 weeks in July 2020) was met, despite the difficult time that everyone knows about", says Lindner. "At SCM, it is always important for us to involve our specialists from the plants in Italy in relevant projects. This allows us to clarify all points at a very early stage of the project and to make sure that there are no surprises later," Ott explains. An important point was also the interface for the integration of the machine into the complete production line. The integration was also carried out in consultation with the other production line partners.

"Thanks to the central location of SCM Schweiz AG, we can always be at the customer's site very quickly if any issues arise. Local customer service, in consultation with the plant in Italy, is of central importance to us," Ott is pleased to say. SCM is therefore currently also investing in the further expansion of the Swiss branch in Rothenburg.

Lothar Mayer (HBS holzBaumarktschweiz 03/2021)

Tschopp