Plantation Softwood - Good For All
Creating buildings with plantation softwood frames provides benefits for every member of every community, everywhere. Growing forests ranks near the top of the list of noble acts. Using the harvested timber for cost effective, safe and heathy housing and then replanting the forest to repeat the cycle ranks just as highly. It helps air quality, stores carbon, and just as importantly, creates family homes, the basis of any community.
Plantation Timber’s Limitations
Plantation softwood is strong, light weight and easy to work with. It allows structures of almost any shape or size to be created. It does have a limiting factor, the fibril structure of plantation softwood timber allows joints to loosen and it has poor end grain withdrawal resistance for nails. The design load capacity, or the joint strength required in different conditions, is often reduced as the timber frames of structures continually bump and shake due to high winds or earth tremors. Timber joints created using tin plate connectors are initially very rigid.
Why Use Springs
The physics of rigid structures cracking because of bumps and shakes is well known, it is the reason your car has springs. Those springs absorb the bumps your car chassis is subjected to and then return to their original shape and position waiting to absorb the next bump.
The Quick Grip framing connector acts in a very similar way in a timber frame, the timber joints are spring loaded. Timber joints that will move slightly during shakes and bumps, and return exactly to their original position without loss of strength, just like your car springs do. In fact the steel in the framing connector is quite similar to the steel used in your car springs.
Using Applied Physics
Using a scientific approach, with controlled laboratory testing, the Quick Grip framing connector causes minimal damage to the fibril structure of plantation softwood timber when being inserted and also during the bumps and shakes all buildings experience during strong winds and tremors. The problem of low end grain resistance is removed completely, the joints do not loosen at all due to bumps and shakes, or the shrinking and expanding of the timber due to variations in the moisture content levels.
The steel used is very high tensile and is hot dipped galvanized using a 95% zinc and 5% aluminium coating. The corrosion resistance levels are superior and the framing connector is suitable for usage in coastal areas.
Graph 1 traces the movement of the joint as it is separated by 2mm some hundreds of times. The peak load is 4.89kN which gradually reduces to a steady 4kN after hundreds of load cycles. The Quick Grip framing connector maintains its design load capacity after hundreds of approximately 400 kilogram load cycles are applied to the joint
Graph 1: Quick Grip Staples Timber Connector Testing Graph 1
Graph 2 traces the movement of the joint as it is separated by 5mm 20 times. This is after the joint has already had the hundreds of load cycles shown in graph 1. It shows a peak load of 5.34kN during this load cycle and the joint still does not fail. The joint returns to its original position. A timber framed structure in a high wind or earth tremor would be well served having the Quick Grip framing connector absorbing the bumps and shocks it was being subjected to.
Graph 2: Quick Grip Staples Timber Connector Testing Graph 2
The withdrawal resistance of the Quick Grip framing connector is up to ten times that of traditional nails. Quick Grip framing connector joints do not loosen; the timber frame structure's maximum design load capacity is maintained for a much longer period. The Quick Grip framing connector is designed so that it does not suffer metal fatigue, or work hardening, whilst it absorbs the bumps and shocks in your timber frame. Minimal damage to the fibril structure of the softwood has been achieved after extensive and carefully controlled testing.
The Quick Grip framing connector will significantly improve the performance of your timber frame structure. It is an innovation which will work in the background, silently enhancing and maintaining the integrity of the timber frames in your home, or your customers homes, for many years.