In the spirit of practice-oriented teaching, the Chair of Timber Engineering and Building Construction at Mainz University of Applied Sciences, and Rothoblaas srl offered a practical workshop on connection technology in multi-storey timber construction for students. In the first part of the workshop, the students of the Timber Construction class in the Master's degree program in Civil Engineering were informed about the current status of the development of various connection solutions in timber engineering, especially in the field of mass timber buildings by Jonathan Fries. They were then able to see for themselves how easy the SPIDER connector is to install. Tom Bender and Christian Pinger, research associates at Holzbauforschung Mainz, prepared a cross-laminated timber ceiling element, produced by Eugen Decker Holzbau KG, Morbach, Rhineland-Palatinate, using a hand-held CNC router so that the students could install the SPIDER in the correct position with form-fit.

We like to thank our partners Rothoblaas Germany and Eugen Decker Holzindustrie for their support of timber education and research in Mainz, in particular Brigitte Decker-Wilbert, David Nothelfer and Jonathan Fries.

Kay-Uwe Schober