BACKGROUND

Large commercial sawmills cut logs into boards in stages. In some sawmills, the logs are transported through a series of machine centers along a primary breakdown line to cut the log into a center cant and one or more sideboards. Some primary breakdown lines have a chipper that opens a flat face along the log and a downstream saw center that cuts longitudinally through the log, parallel to the flat face, to release a flitch with planar faces and wane edges. The flitch is then diverted to an edger along a secondary breakdown line to be cut into the desired sideboard. In this scenario, the edger forms the longitudinal edges of the sideboard.

Edgers typically require at least one human operator. Edgers can also be significantly more expensive to purchase and maintain than profilers. Thus, some mills have reduced operating costs by installing a profiler along the primary breakdown line between the chipper and the saw and eliminating the edger along the secondary breakdown line. In these processing lines, the profiler chips the log or cant to form the longitudinal edges of the desired sideboard, thereby forming a profile of the sideboard, and the downstream saw center cuts the sideboard from the remaining cant.

While eliminating the edger may eliminate some costs, it may also reduce the number of board combinations that can be obtained from the log.

