OSI Machinerie Self-Centering Planers in the United States

Planers, profilers and end matchers from Saint-Georges

OSI Machinerie builds in Saint-Georges, Quebec, which is the same town as Lico and EBI. That is a coincidence of geography rather than a corporate relationship, but it is a useful one: three of the four lines we carry are built within a short drive of each other, by people who know each other's machines.

The range is narrow and deliberate. Self-centering planers in four sizes, a profiler, and a family of end matchers. There is no attempt to cover everything a mill might want, which is generally a good sign in machinery.

What self-centering changes

A conventional planer presses one face of the board against a bed and cuts the other. Whatever shape the board had going in, the reference is the bed, so cup and twist tend to be reproduced rather than removed.

A self-centering machine works both faces and splits the cut, referencing the material itself. The finished piece comes out centered on its own thickness, and OSI guarantees plus or minus 0.003 in on it. On the SM-450 profiler the figure is plus or minus 0.002 in, on pieces down to nine inches, which is short enough to matter on a flooring line where the minimum usable piece is exactly that sort of length.

The kiln argument nobody is making

The two obvious places for a planer are before a scanner, where a clean face makes the optimizer's job easier, and after a ripsaw, where OSI's design lets it take strips that would defeat a conventional machine.

The third is more interesting and almost nobody is selling it. Surfacing stock before it goes into the kiln makes thickness more uniform going in, and uniform stock dries more evenly. Drying is usually the hard capacity ceiling in a hardwood operation, more so than any saw, and it is the most expensive thing to add to. Anything that makes the kilns you already own behave more predictably is worth costing properly, and it is not a conversation most equipment suppliers will start with you.

Getting an OSI machine into a U.S. plant

OSI equipment is nearly always specified as part of a station rather than on its own, because where you put it decides which model you need. We quote it with the builder's own engineering behind it and one number to call. If you are already looking at a rip line or scanning, this is the right time to work out whether surfacing belongs in the same project.

Before a scanner. A scanner reads what it can see, and a rough face hides defects and confuses geometry. Surfacing first gives the optimizer a clean look at the board, which improves every decision it makes downstream.

After a ripsaw. OSI's own position is that theirs is the planer that can take strips straight off a rip line. Because it centers on the material rather than referencing one face against a bed, it handles narrow strips that a conventional planer would struggle to hold.

Before the kiln. This is the one most mills have never been offered. Presurfacing green stock before drying makes thickness more uniform going in, and more uniform stock dries more evenly and more predictably. Kiln time is capacity, and capacity you recover this way is capacity you did not have to build.