The thin-cutting frame story:
The first thin-cutting saw for ski production
The thin-cutting frame story:
The first thin-cutting saw for ski production
In 1970, Hans Wintersteiger developed the world's first frame saw for thin-cutting. It was used by Fischer Ski for manufacturing skis, whereby laminated strips – the "ski cores" inside the skis – were cut from ash. The thin-cutting frame saw was a true innovation. Until then, sawmills only had large frame saws. Hans Wintersteiger derived his small thin-cutting system from these large sawing machines.
The thin-cutting frame saw was just one of the special machines WINTERSTEIGER built for Fischer Ski during this period. At peak times, Fischer Ski was using more than 10 thin-cutting frame saws on its ski production lines. In the 1980s, WINTERSTEIGER was producing 3 to 4 frame saws per year. Apart from Fischer Ski, these were only produced for special requirements in response to specific customer requests, and were not actively marketed at first.
Thin-cutting systems take off.
The production of multi-layer parquet began in the early 1990s, and the growth rates since then have been revolutionary. At the same time, there was a rapid rise in the demand for frame saws. WINTERSTEIGER developed new thin-cutting frame saws and ultimately founded the Division Engineering, the predecessor of the current Division Woodtech.
Machine capacities became increasingly important, as the annual volume of parquet flooring was rapidly increasing. In 1995, WINTERSTEIGER developed the DSG 200 thin-cutting frame saw, a highly successful machine that is still part of the product range almost 30 years later.
Today, the European parquet market alone has an annual volume of 90 million m² of parquet flooring. 90,000,000 m²: This is an area measuring 9.5 x 9.5 km, and corresponds to the size of 12,600 soccer fields, which is equivalent to 9,000 hectares.
Along with creating parquet floors, the thin-cutting saw frame is also used to make pencils, musical instruments, vehicle interiors, ski and snowboard cores, dowels, multilayer boards, training boards, fruit boxes, models, doors, toys, sleighs, and many other niche applications