Sawmill Automation: From Pit Saws to ABB Robots

Sawmill automation from pit saws and Dutch wind mills to lumber scanners, the robot run Sawbox and 2026 mill expansions, and where ABB robots can stack boards.

INDUSTRIAL ROBOTICS

Chat With Robot

10/2/20265 min read

Sawmill automation goes back a long way, since cutting logs into boards was among the first heavy jobs people handed to water and wind power. This post follows that story from two men with a pit saw to the wind-powered mills of the Dutch Zaan district, then to the scanners that now grade lumber at line speed. It also covers this year's news, including a Maine sawmill that plans to almost double its output, and an Austrian sawmill where a robot sorts and stacks the boards. Finally, it looks at where ABB robots already work with wood and where they could fit in a mill.

Stacks of debarked spruce logs in a sawmill yard with mill buildings and a chimney behind

Log piles in the yard of Metsä Wood's Kyrö sawmill in Finland, 2016. Photo: Kotivalo / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

How logs became boards before robots

For centuries, boards were cut by hand. In a saw pit, one sawyer stood on top of the log and another stood in the pit below, pulling a long saw up and down between them, and the top sawyer had to guide the blade so each board came out an even thickness. Water power came early. The Hierapolis mill in Asia Minor, from the 3rd century AD, already used a crank and connecting rod to drive saws through stone, and water-powered timber sawmills appeared around the Oslofjord in southern Norway in the late 1400s.

Black and white photo of one man standing on a log and another below pulling a long two man saw

Two men sawing a log by hand on a raised trestle in Estonia, 1913. Photo: Johannes Pääsuke / Wikimedia Commons (public domain)

In 1594 the Dutch inventor Cornelis Corneliszoon van Uitgeest built a wind-powered sawmill that turned logs into planks about 30 times faster than before. By 1731 the Zaan district north of Amsterdam had 256 of the roughly 450 sawmills in the area. Steam and new blades followed. Marc Isambard Brunel built a steam sawmill at Chatham Dockyard between 1812 and 1814, William Newberry patented a band saw in 1808, and from the 1860s the French firm Périn made band saws practical for daily mill work.

A round log clamped in a wooden carriage with vertical saw blades cutting through it

The frame saw cutting a log inside the wind sawmill Het Jonge Schaap at Zaanse Schans. Photo: Quistnix / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 2.5)

Even in big steam mills, the work after the saw stayed manual for a long time. Workers pulled boards off the green chain, graders judged each board by eye against the grading rules, and crews stacked lumber with spacer sticks so air could dry it. That handling was heavy and risky work. Today most of a large mill is computerized, and a modern mill can turn 800 small logs an hour into chips, sawdust and sorted, stacked and bound planks. By 2019, auto-grading scanners such as FinScan's BoardMasterNOVA were checking boards against the WWPA and NLGA grading rules used in North America.

Black and white photo of very tall stacks of boards with men standing on top beside a rail car

Workers stacking stickered lumber by hand at the Potlatch Lumber Company in Idaho, 1907. Photo: Steve Shook / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0)

Sawmills in 2026: expansions and robot stackers

US lumber production is under pressure. HBS Dealer reported on 17 September 2026 that US sawmill output fell in the first quarter of 2026, its second quarterly drop in a row, according to Federal Reserve data. Some companies are investing anyway. On 16 September, Irving Forest Products announced a modernization of its Ashland sawmill in Maine that will raise capacity from 130 million to 250 million board feet a year and create or retain about 220 jobs, backed by $112.9 million in federal and state tax credit allocations. In Nevada, a $50 million USDA package is funding a new saw line for Tahoe Forest Products.

Large piles of round logs with their cut ends facing the camera in a yard surrounded by trees

Logs stacked in a timber yard in Biei, Hokkaido, Japan, 2019. Photo: Adam Jones / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 2.0)

Control systems and robots are part of these upgrades. On 28 September, RemaSawco, part of the Swedish group Image Systems, won an order to supply a Nordic sawmill with a new saw line control system, to be installed in 2027. The Springer Sawbox in Austria automates almost the whole mill. Logs are scanned, clamped and cut by a band saw and circular saws in one step. Then a robot picks up each board and places it in a sorting area, and the stacking sticks are laid automatically. One employee watches the whole hall, and Springer says a single shift can cut about 15,000 cubic meters of logs a year.

Bundles of yellow lumber on grey steel racks against a cloudy blue sky

Dimension lumber stored on steel racks at a lumber yard in Laramie, Wyoming, 2024. Photo: Tony Webster / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0)

ABB robots already work with lumber a step after the sawmill. 7robotics, an ABB Robotics Value Provider, built a pallet-nailing cell with Canopy Lumber Products in Iowa that can drive up to 12,000 nails a day, and on 15 May 2025 it won ABB's Most Innovative Solution award for the system. In 2024, ABB teamed up with the UK start-up AUAR, whose ABB robots cut sheet timber and assemble it into building parts in small factories. In a sawmill, ABB's IRB 660 and IRB 460 palletizers or a large IRB 6700 could in principle stack boards or packages, but we found no ABB sawmill installation on record.

A large white ABB robot arm holds a plywood panel above a cart of timber parts in a workshop

An ABB robot lifting a timber part in AUAR's robotic building workshop. Photo: ABB

Where sawmill automation goes next

The likely next step in big mills is the back end of the line: sorting, stacking, laying sticks, wrapping and labeling packages. People still do most of the lifting there. A stacking cell with an ABB palletizer or an IRB 6700 and a vacuum or fork gripper is a realistic possibility, and the controller can follow boards on a moving belt with conveyor tracking. Mills would want such cells planned in RobotStudio first, because a stopped stacker can halt the whole line.

A white ABB palletizing robot stacking cardboard boxes onto pallets in a factory

An ABB IRB 660 palletizing robot, the type that could stack lumber packages at the end of a line. Photo: ABB

Boards are long, heavy, wet and often warped, and they come off the saw in sizes that change all day. Dust, cold and vibration are hard on cameras and grippers, and Springer found that housings around its Sawbox units kept dust out. It also replaced the first robot with a simpler outfeed device, because the saw stood still while the robot lifted boards. Cost matters too, because a robot cell has to pay for itself in an industry where some mills are closing. Workers also need new skills, from robot maintenance to running scanners, and that training has to reach the rural towns where mills are.

A white ABB robot on a track works between wooden building modules in an arched hall

An ABB robot assembling timber building parts in an AUAR micro-factory. Photo: ABB

For homeowners and small landowners, the picture is different. Portable band sawmills on trailers let farmers and hobbyists cut their own logs into boards, and most of that work is still done by hand. Where robots do reach home building, it is through the timber itself, in the frames and panels that factories like AUAR's build with ABB robots. Wood shops that finish the boards are a separate story, covered in our post on woodworking robot sanding.

An orange trailer mounted band sawmill with a covered saw head next to a pile of logs in a barn

A Wood-Mizer LT70 portable band sawmill in a shed in Luxembourg. Photo: Jwh / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0 LU)

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