Lateral forces determine dimensional accuracy of the narrow-kerf sawing of wood

Abstract

The shrinking global forest area limits the supply of industrially usable raw resources. This, in combination with the ever-increasing consumption of timber due to population growth can lead to the lack of a positive balance between the annual volumetric growth and consumption of wood. An important innovation toward increasing environmental and economic sustainability of timber production is to reduce the volume of wood residues by minimizing the sawing kerf. It results in higher material yield but may impact the dimensional accuracy of derived products. Therefore, the cutting tool geometry as well as the sawing process as a whole must be carefully optimized to assure optimal use of resources. The goal of this study is to better understand the causes of machining errors that occur when sawing wood with saws of varying thickness of kerf, with a special focus on re-sawing thin lamellae performed on the gang saw. Numerical simulations were tested against experimental results, considering influence of diverse components of cutting forces, in addition to the initial and operating stiffness coefficients of the saw blade. It has been demonstrated that asymmetric loads from the cutting process for the scraper saw blade can cause sawing inaccuracies. The simulation methodology developed in this research can be straightforwardly extended towards determination of optimal geometry of other cutting tools, particularly with the reduced sawing kerf. This may lead to more sustainable use of natural resources as well as an increase in economic gain for the wood processing industries.

Characterization of Arctic Driftwood as Naturally Modified Material. Part 1: Machinability

“…This results in increased values of cutting forces, elevated heat release and intensive cutting edge dullness. The other explanation for higher values of double-normalized cutting forces noticed in the case of sawing driftwood may be analogous to those observed by Orłowski and Sandak [50] and Orlowski et al [51] during cutting of frozen pine wood. An increase in cutting forces was associated with the effect of frozen water crystals deposited inside of wood fibers that provided additional strength and material stiffness.…”

Capacity of surface production of band sawing in manufacture of oak floor upper layers

“…The main disadvantage of narrow kerf cutting tools is that the reduction of the kerf size decreases the blade's stiffness (Orlowski 2003), which causes lower cutting accuracy (Orlowski et al 2020). In the literature, some band saw blade stiffness determination approaches have been considered (Orlowski et al 2022b). The model proposed in this paper, which uses numerical simulations, may support the design of the reduced kerf cutting tools with a smaller accuracy reduction.…”

Strategy of numerical modelling for band saw blade on wood logs cutting

“…There are many works about the compromise of the service life of cutting discs caused by complex forces during the operation, the modal analysis of the blades is applied as an analysis method [5]. In the research by Kazimierz [6], he considers the influence of different components of the cutting force on the quality of wood machining, with blades of different thicknesses. The proposal is to develop blades with extremely reduced thicknesses, to reduce the wood residue in the cutting operation.…”