![]() ![]() In 2001, Lamello invented the award winning and innovative Invis joinery system that used a magnetic drive system to activate hidden fasteners. In 1996, the company acquired and developed the Schneeberger glue system. ![]() The iconic Lamello Top 10 biscuit joiner was introduced in 1988, but not everything Lamello did was biscuits. In the United States, Lamello products are distributed by Colonial Saw, based in Massachusetts. The Tanga 150 window cutter was invented in 1981, and the company launched a string of international subsidiaries in the 1980s and 1990s. Karl Steiner took over company management with his brother Alfred in 1979, ushering in new expansion. Three years later, the company expanded with new production and administrative offices in Bubendorf, Switzerland. ![]() A biscuit-based wood repair system was launched in 1970. It didn’t take long for the inventive mind of Hermann Steiner to expand the uses and applications for biscuit joinery. Lamello has continued the spirit of innovation and invention started by its founder with more award-winning products beyond the original wooden biscuit system. Excess energy is fed into the Bubendorf district heating system. Wood chips and shavings are partly sold as fuel for heating and partly used for Lamello’s own wood chip heating system, which is used to heat all company premises. Large pieces of wood make for good fire wood. But the remaining material is not disposed. Only about 20 percent of the raw material used is turned into biscuits. The pattern makes it easier to slide the biscuits into grooves and for the glue to be absorbed. Dried cants are cut into strips that are compressed with 25 tons of pressure to the 4mm thickness of biscuits, also adding the Lamello logo and cross-hatch pattern in the process. Logs are cut and dried and then cut into cants. Some 1.27 million board feet of beech is processed every year. The process begins with beech trees harvested within a roughly 12-mile radius of Lamello headquarters. The company has its own sawmill, wood kiln and several machines specifically developed for biscuit production. The oval wooden biscuits are still produced at the company headquarters in Bubendorf, Switzerland. The wooden biscuit of the Lamello System seems so simple and has been used to join millions of wooden components since its invention in 1955. ![]() Lamello biscuits are made of compressed solid beech wood with locally sourced wood in Switzerland. My mother would also return to the office to do the bookkeeping for the business, which was then still a joinery (cabinet shop).” “For us kids it was normal for our father to return to the workshop after dinner to work on his inventions. “The company became part of our family life,” said Karl Steiner. Then, in 1968, he came up with a hand-operated portable power tool to cut the joinery, which really paved the way for launching the system worldwide. Hermann Steiner first conceived the system in 1955, but it wasn’t until three years later that he built the first stationary machine for biscuit joinery. From this point on we dedicated ourselves fully to the production and development of innovative joining systems.” The family business no longer focused on cabinetry work and interior fit-outs, instead becoming an industrial business. “This little wood biscuit is a joining element also in a figurative sense, marking an important turning point in our company's history: thanks to the biscuit, the Hermann Steiner Joinery evolved into a public limited company 50 years ago, now known as Lamello AG. Yet my father Hermann Steiner's phenomenal invention is much more than that,” said Karl Steiner. “The original wood biscuit is a joining element which joins wooden panels precisely and firmly. Karl Steiner, former owner/CEO and current Chair of the Administrative Board of Lamello AG, was in high school when his father Hermann Steiner invented biscuit joinery in his cabinet shop in Liestal, Switzerland. Hermann Steiner invented the Lamello biscuit joining system in his cabinet shop in Switzerland. ![]()
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