Westmill Machine Automation, a small family-owned business in Aldergrove, BC is picking up multi-million dollar contracts and innovation awards for its LightSORT system for plywood manufacturers, reports the Aldergrove Star.
Westmill has always supplied veneer drying machinery, parts and service to plywood manufacturers, but about six years ago set up a R&D division with the aim of solving the problem of plywood delamination, reports the newspaper.
Brian Martin, general manager of Westmill’s R&D division, said Forintek Canada Corp, funded by the industry and government, had done case studies of the green veneer sorting after delamination was identified as a major problem seven years ago.
“Six years ago we took on an ambitious project introduced by the manufacturers themselves and a group of scientists at UBC dedicated to growing the forest industry,” said Mr Martin.
Each log has three distinct moisture contents, and Mr Martin said it was “critical to identify the different moisture contents so they can be put through dryers with a certain recipe of resins so that they will bond to each other.”
Scientists discovered that a beam of light would reveal the different moisture levels, because the water acts as a lens.
Using this discovery, Forintek and Westmill jointly developed a highly accurate light transmission system that measures the moisture content of any tree species over the entire length and width of each sheet of veneer.
