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Optimizing Lumber Rip – Woodworking Network

When production demands outgrow the capabilities of a single straight-line ripsaw, manufacturers have two options: they can add more straight-line ripsaws, with additional labor required, or upgrade to a gang ripsaw. The latter is usually recommended, and manufacturers typically start off with a 12-inch width capacity gang rip with fixed blades on the arbor. Read […]

How to Improve Your Rough Mill Efficiency – Woodworking Network

This article discusses strategies for wood product manufacturers to enhance efficiency and profitability in their rough mill operations. Highlighting the current favorable market conditions and challenges like rising labor costs, it emphasizes the financial impact of optimizing lumber yield. It explores the benefits of moving blade gang ripsaws, which minimize changeover times and maximize yield […]

Kick-back Demo Video

This video demonstrates the potential dangers when anti-kickback safety features are disabled, missing, or not properly maintained. You’ll see a vivid illustration of the serious impact kickback can have on a rip saw. Mereen-Johnson has developed a controlled method to simulate kickbacks on any rip saw, helping to underscore the importance of these critical safety […]

Select Rip Saw Maintenance

Consistent rip saw maintenance is what keeps a Mereen-Johnson Select Rip Saw producing glue-line quality cuts and meeting its full 24-hour-shift duty cycle. On a moving-blade Select Rip Saw — with multiple shifting saw assemblies, an air-actuated arbor brake, anti-kickback finger systems, and integrated laser alignment — that maintenance program touches more components than on […]

Select Rip Saw Calibration and Trouble Shooting

Even a well-built rip saw needs periodic rip saw calibration to stay within factory tolerances. Wear accumulates, lasers drift slightly, chain race tracking shifts under heavy production, and small alignment changes start showing up as visible cut quality issues — un-square edges, no glue joint, snipe, wedging. Calibration is what brings the machine back to […]

Rip Navigator Installation Guide

The Mereen-Johnson Rip Navigator is a complete rip optimization system — the Scout Deck scans each board for width, length, and crook, the Tracker conveys boards from hopper through to the saw, and the Rip Navigator software and controls turn scanning data into optimized cut decisions. The system delivers up to 20 boards per minute […]

Rip Navigator Controls Guide

The Rip Navigator 4.0 software is the brain of a Mereen-Johnson automated rip saw line. It takes scanning data from the Scout Deck — board width, length, and crook for every piece of lumber that enters the system — and turns it into optimized cut decisions that the rip saw executes in real time. Knowing […]