Abnormal Amounts of Lumber “Cross Up” Errors

The Retro C is equipped with sensors that are constantly detecting the position of the lumber as it is loaded onto the material feed arms. As lumber passes by the sensors they measure the position of the board on each side to make sure that the board is not cross up.

When the software notifies an operator of a “cross up”, the sensors on the stationary and carriage arms are noting that they don’t see lumber passing by at the same time.

Note: There are multiple sensors on the arms, the “cross up” sensors are the two sensors are directly across from each other (the are also the furthest two up the arm).

Summary

Most of the time if you are receiving more lumber cross up warnings than you think you should it’s because you have saw dust covering some or most of one of the sensors. If that isn’t the case it is likely one of these reasons 1) The sensor has been hit and it has rotated out of position/alignment 2) The sensor’s sensitivity is not set right. 3) One or both of the sensors have a bad cable. Most of the time the issue is cleaning the sensor or alignment of the sensor so focus on those issue before continuing.

Images of sensor locations

In the image below the sensor with the issue is the one in the center of the picture and it is located on the stationary side of the saw.

Instructions

1. The first step is to make sure that there is nothing like saw dust on the sensors. Take a towel and wipe off the sensors.
2. If step 1 doesn’t solve the problem then the sensors need to be aligned so that the lumber passes over both sensors on both sides at the same time. The alignment is done by with a single bolt that holds the sensor in place. See the below picture for the bolt that allows the sensor to twist.

In order to tell if the sensors are aligned the operator must load a piece of lumber into the saw and let it run past the sensors. At the same time the lumber is passing the sensors the check screen will display how closely the sensors are aligned. The goal is to get the sensor align readout to be as close to zero as possible. It will likely never be zero (as shown in the image below), unless the software has recently been restarted. The goal is to be within 0.30 of zero. I.E. 0.3 or less or -0.3 or greater.

1. If step 1 and 2 are not working well the last item would be the sensitivity of the sensor can be turned up or down. That can be done by turning blue dial on the sensor. Most likely one of the sensors needs it sensitivity turned down (counter clockwise) on the dial.

1. If all else fails one of your sensors or the cable might be failing. First start with replacing the sensor and then the cable. Most of the time the sensor will fail prior to the cable.