The disclosure below relates generally to manufacturing equipment and more particularly, to systems for assisting in the manufacture of composite dry freight panels or the like, and methods for assembling the same.
Dry freight trucks and trailers typically include composite wall panels in the cargo area. Composite wall panels are advantageous to the construction of the truck because they allow easy, uniform assembly of the walls in the freight area. Typically, the composite panels are approximately 48 inches wide and can be any height between 76 inches and 106 inches depending on the desired application. An exemplary composite dry freight panel includes two parallel metal plates, such as galvanized steel, with a lightweight core, such as high-density polyethylene, in between.
A common way to join adjacent composite panels is by a ship lap joint. Each panel includes a lip formed by one of the metal plates that extends past the core of the panel. The overlapping lips of two adjacent panels can be secured to the panels by an adhesive such as caulk and/or double-sided tape. To ensure that the ship lap joint has uniform quality, the lips of the two adjacent panels are often pretreated with adhesive. This can make the process of aligning adjacent panels before forming a ship lap joint difficult.
A common method for aligning panels before forming a ship lap joint is to have at least two people carefully carry the panel and lay it in place before the lips of adjacent panels come in contact with the panels. This process is labor intensive and can be prone to errors if the panels come in contact before properly aligned.