Georgia on our Minds: WEIMA at IWF 2022
The wood industry is where it all began for WEIMA’s size reduction machinery. Since then, the machinery has evolved along with the industry to process a variety of wood waste, including hardwood, softwood, veneer, MDF, plywood, skeletons, dust, shavings, and more! WEIMA plans to feature shredders and briquette presses in their booth at the International Woodworking Fair (IWF) in Atlanta in August, 2022!
Many companies have goals in mind that include sustainability, profitability, space savings, and workforce maximization. With WEIMA’s wood waste size reduction equipment, each one of these goals can be achieved.
Shred it where it's made
Since the 1980s, WEIMA has been a leader in shredding and grinding machinery for the wood industry. This machinery makes it possible for companies to reduce wood waste right where it’s created. Since wood waste comes in many shapes and sizes, WEIMA wood shredders come in a variety of sizes.
Hopper-fed or Horizontal? Here's how to choose.
Hopper-fed shredders have a range of infeed dimensions so that even the bulkiest of materials, including furniture pieces or plywood panels, can be introduced into the shredder without pre-cutting the material. For smaller materials WEIMA offers many single-shaft shredders with smaller infeed hoppers, including the WEIMA Woodchuck.
Don’t let its small footprint fool you– this machine has plenty of shredding power for end cuts, blocks, and other wood waste pieces!
Linear waste is ideally shredded using a horizontal wood grinder that can be placed near a CNC machine or table saw, which is creating the waste material. The linear wood waste can fall directly onto an infeed conveyor for hands-off shredding. WEIMA’s horizontal wood shredders are ideal for processing window profiles, skeletons, rippings, and other kinds of linear wood waste.
This line of machinery includes the Beaver 400 and the Horizontal Beaver 300, as well as the Tiger 600— all of which will be on display in the WEIMA booth at IWF!
Dependable and ubiquitous
WEIMA shredders are well-known in wood shops worldwide. They can be found in a variety of operations including joineries, cabinetmakers’ workshops, furniture companies, cabinetmakers, lumber yards, sawmills, and more!
The benefits of wood shredding
Shredding wood waste where it’s created has many potential benefits. Space savings in production facilities is a high priority—storing bulky wood scrap takes up valuable floor space. Often this material is loaded into dumpsters for transport to an off-site location, and companies pay by the truckload and not by weight. Shredding bulky wood waste can maximize the space in these dumpsters and minimize the number of truckloads going out each month, creating an instant ROI opportunity.
Certain types of wood that do not include any chemical treatments can be shredded and used as animal bedding or garden mulch in some cases—economic and environmental! No matter what, this frees up production space for more lucrative day-to-day processes rather than wood waste storage.
Wood waste in top shape.
Save space, energy, and money through briquetting!
Dust and shavings are natural byproducts of many wood-related manufacturing processes. This often results in unclean or unsafe environments in the production area. But the volume of these materials can be reduced by up to 90% and made into briquettes, which are easier to handle and transport throughout a production facility.
Briquetting as an alternative option for energy
Most of these briquettes are shaped similarly to hockey pucks and are created using only hydraulic pressure in a WEIMA briquette press. Since no glues or binders are used in this process, these materials can be burned for energy in many situations, like in facilities that use boilers for heat production. With fuel costs on the rise, this is an incredible way to save on energy costs.
In the matrix-style briquette presses, brick-shaped briquettes are formed rather than round briquettes. No matter the dimension of the briquettes, they can be stacked easily and can achieve a compaction ratio of up to 9:1.
Small but mighty
WEIMA’s C 150 briquette press is a compact machine for small and medium-sized companies. It can transform loose wood chips and dust into round briquettes with a diameter of 50 mm. No adhesives or binders are used in any WEIMA briquette presses– only hydraulic pressure.
Connecting this briquette press to a pre-existing air system is easy via a rotary air lock. This feature, along with the fill sensor within the hopper, means it can be set to run without operator present. When the hopper reaches a certain fill height, it can turn itself on automatically. When the material in the hopper drops below that level once again, the briquette press will resume standby mode.
This machine will be compressing wood chips in the WEIMA booth at IWF 2022. Stop by to see it in person!
WEIMA will be exhibiting at IWF 2022 in booth B5953.
