In Ireland and Great Britain, the Irish company ECC Timber Products has developed into a leading manufacturer of fences, pallets, and construction timber. ECC processes around 700,000 cubic meters of wood annually in its own sawmill and has relied on the machines of the Biberach sharpening specialist Vollmer in the sharpening room for over 30 years. Recently, the medium-sized company has fully automated the re-sharpening of its carbide-tipped circular saws with two new Vollmer grinding machines – unmanned and around the clock.
The Irish call their place Corr na Móna, which translates to Cornamona in English. The
village is located on the northern shore of Loch Coirib and belongs to the Irish-speaking region Gaeltacht. Here, PJ Fahy founded the sawmill ECC Timber Products in 1992, which manufactures and sells various products for the Irish and British markets, such as construction timber for buildings, fences, pallets, packaging, highway fences, or acoustic panels. ECC places great importance on sustainable forestry and also utilizes residuals from wood processing, supplying bark, wood chips, sawdust, and dry shavings for gardening, biomass, or animal bedding. With an annual turnover of over 100 million euros, ECC is the largest customer of the Irish forestry company Coillte and the largest
exporter of sawn and planed wood products in Ireland – the company processes up to 14,000 cubic meters of wood weekly in its sawmill.
Team and machinery are guarantees of success
Our success is based, on the one hand, on our qualified and dedicated team
of 150 employees and, on the other hand, on our high-quality
machinery,” says Pat Mullarkey, maintenance manager at ECC Timber Products.
We have relied on Vollmer technologies for our machines in the sharpening room since shortly
after the company was founded.
Even today, many machines from the early days, supplied by the Biberach sharpening specialist Vollmer, operate daily in ECC's sharpening room – including grinding machines for circular saws, straightening centers for band saws, and also stellite machines. Due to its strategic orientation, ECC is currently planning the next phase of modernization of its sawmill. As the first part of this plan, the sharpening room, where the circular saws and band saw blades are maintained, has been relocated from its previous location.
Sharpening room automated with CHF 840 and CS 860
carbide-tipped circular saw blades Image: Vollmer
We took this opportunity to invest in a brand new and purpose-built facility
equipped with the latest technologies to future-proof our
company,” says Pat Mullarkey. “In this process, we have overhauled some of our previous Vollmer machines and additionally invested in the next generation of Vollmer sharpening technology, bringing the two grinding machines CHF 840 and CS 860 to us in Corr na Móna.
This allowed us to fully automate the previously manual re-sharpening.” The two newcomers from Vollmer arrived in March 2024. With the CNC-controlled CHF 840, ECC sharpens the tooth faces of its carbide-tipped circular saw blades with diameters ranging from 80 to 840 millimeters. Thanks to the simple
operation via a multifunctional handwheel, the selection and movement of the axes are done through a module, which minimizes possible operator errors. Additionally, the handwheel serves as a potentiometer. With the fully automatic grinding machine CS 860, the company processes the chip and clearance surfaces of its carbide-tipped circular saws, with the handling system ND 320 ensuring that the grinding machine can operate unmanned and around the clock.
Previously, an employee was busy constantly loading and unloading the manual machines. Thanks to the ND loading system, up to 25 circular saw blades, each weighing up to 20 kilograms, can be loaded. The circular saws are then fed to the grinding machine unmanned via a fully automatic measurement and scanning process. The rapid growth of ECC means that the new Vollmer machines are exclusively used for the maintenance and servicing of its own circular saws.
Cycle times of the circular saws reduced by 30 percent
For our facilities in wood cutting, we need a box with 25
carbide-tipped 28-inch circular saws per shift, and we also have four multiple miter saws, two board trimmers, or a high-speed planer,” says Pat Mullarkey. “All these machines operate daily in two-shift operation, and at many workstations, the saw blades need to be changed daily. This brings high demands on our sharpening room, which we can optimally manage with the new Vollmer machines.
The introduction of automated re-sharpening has not only significantly increased the capacities in the sharpening room at ECC but also improved the quality of the sharpening processes. This has positively impacted the cutting quality of the circular saws. In the sawmill, this leads not only to higher productivity but also to significantly longer service lives of the saw blades with improved edge treatments and precision levels in the sawn wood products.
In numerical terms, this means that ECC has been able to reduce the cycle times of its carbide-tipped circular saw blades by more than 30 percent with the machines CHF 840 and CS 860. The example of our customer ECC shows how huge volumes of wood are produced into finished products like fences, pallets, or construction timber in modern sawmills,” says Martyn Cross, managing director of Vollmer UK. “This, in turn, requires the highest quality and precision at each individual tooth of the saw, whose different geometries can be sharpened fully automatically and with high speed and precision using our grinding machines.
Contact:
