Trusses; New Art

Yesterday, we explored the Fairbanks Truss Company. It’s this dinky red building off on Phillips Field Road. The guy there showed us one of the truss programs. R asked a good question, “What the heck do they need us (engineers) for when the program does everything?”

Hehehe…

We later went into the actual manufacturing part of the operation. To be honest, I thought it would be alot more complicated. They have a machine that programs for how to position the saws for cutting the boards and then they line up these magnatic like tables where they need to be to place the boards together. They assemble the boards and then go around the joint edges with a machine clamp to connect fanged metal plates that binds all the boards together.

With this process, they can get about 20 trusses done an hour (or that was my understanding).

Then, a game was began. The owner put two scrap pieces together, handed it to a fellow student and dared him to try and break it. Let’s see, factors the owner forgot: we’re currently students that are being taught to figure out the weakest part of a structural item. Hahaha, S snapped the board in half with one huge leap after propping it up across the front face (not on it’s side). And he’s a big guy, about 6′2″ and at least 190lbs. He managed to shear off the metal plates on both sides of the joint.

It was totally awesome.

So what does the owner do? He finds a stronger gauge plate! That time, only the wood sheared off.

It was amusing. For more information on trusses, this is actually a good site: Canadian Wood Council Truss Index. It doesn’t have the truss shape being built at the company we visited (I believe the one being built is called a K-Truss), but gives a good overview on the various things that goes into truss design.

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Also, I have a new art piece. I’ve gotten such great feedback on it at DA I could dance around with joy. Of course, if I hadn’t been ambitious and joined a 3d club and then also submitted the piece for posting in their gallery, it probably wouldn’t of ever gotten noticed. If you’re looking to be active on DA and are looking for feedback, I highly recommend looking into the clubs.

Anyways, the piece, titled “Lost in Dreams” :