Industry News News
Plywood stencil system

Richmond Plywood Corporation, a world-class supplier of Canadian plywood, was increasing the capacity of its panel trim saw line and realized early in the planning stages that the increased production would result in a serious bottleneck at the stenciling station. Under the old system, an operator would have to manually place a stencil on the load, paint it, remove the stencil, and repeat the cycle several more times in order to completely apply the required product markings. Not only was this time-consuming and repetitive work, but it also resulted in inconsistent quality. This was unacceptable, especially for the intricate calligraphic characters used on Asia-bound shipments.

“With spray paint—if the stencil is not pressed up against the package, the resulting paint stencil would look fuzzy, and legibility was a concern,” says Tony Federico, Quality Control Manager for Richmond Plywood.

Samuel Strapping Systems’ Coding & Labeling division looked at Richmond Plywood’s needs and offered an automated, 2-color package stencil system with a custom-sized print window and software controls tailored to meet their exact needs. The Samuel Automated Stencil System was designed to print the same size stencil as Richmond Plywood’s previous system – which was key for the marketing department – while speeding up the rate of application to keep up with the panel trim saw line’s increased capacity. Richmond Plywood’s General Manager, Joe Andrews, selected Samuel Strapping’s Automated Stencil System because it is a proven system that uses up-to-date technology and the results of the new system were even better than expected.

“The Samuel Automated Stencil System is able to stencil packages in excess of the production line’s maximum throughput,” he said.

“The new ink jet stencils are crisper, cleaner, and more legible than the old paint spray system.” When asked about the machine’s reliability, Tony said, “We have not touched the system since startup—with the exception of regular maintenance and cleanup, which can be done on the fly,” says Federico.

With the success of their new system, Richmond Plywood can now afford to look ahead to the future. They are planning on increasing production and efficiencies even further and are considering adding a second stencil system over the next year or two.

“The Samuel Strapping stencil system has worked well since installation. Our products look good, as the stencils are crisp and look the same on every package. Samuel Strapping has been promptly available for service and support. We would absolutely buy a second system and likely will be,” says Andrews.