Zerokerf Lumber Slicing
The technology of parting wood into lumber has recently developed relatively thin kerf methods because thinner kerfs provide greater returns.
Thin Kerf Sawing: A Technology Worth Adopting by the USDA gives several good examples.
Our new Zerokerf method of slicing cants into lumber(US Patent 4,776,376) makes it possible to eliminate the kerf completely, produce smooth cut surfaces, yet follow the intended line of cut accurately enough to conceive of eliminating planing and planing allowances in the foreseeable future.
One practical constraint had been limitation of cut width to about 6 inches, especially for thin offcuts. We have now designed an excellent patentable solution: The ThinWide process.
This makes it much more practical to introduce lumber slicing into sawmills.
Production Considerations
Zerokerf slicing works best on soft, green, unfrozen wood.
Accuracy is crucial to achieving gains in lumber recovery as illustrated clearly by the results of a UBC study comparing the effects of varying kerf and target sizes.
Zerokerf accuracy can reasonably be expected to equal that of high strain bandsaws based on laboratory tests and extensive mill trials with an earlier method which did not balance the forces on opposite sides of the knife. Zerokerf slicing depends upon balancing the forces on opposite sides of the knife and thus greatly improves the accuracy obtained with the previous method.
The throughput feedspeed is constrained mainly by the power applied.
Benefits of Slicing
Slicing's key economic impact lies in the value of the wood in the sawkerf volume you eliminate.
First, you need to calculate the actual volume of the kerfs saved in your mill using the approach illustrated on the linked page.
Next, you may choose to estimate your added profit in one of two ways:
Our Objective
We now seek a means of getting our prototype operating in a suitable production environment.
Our new prototype is ready to hook up to 3-phase, 550-Volt, 50-Amp power.