University of Minnesota Duluth
Natural Resources Research Institute - CARTD
Wood Materials and Manufacturing Program
5013 Miller Trunk Highway
Duluth, MN 55811-1442
218-720-4248 https://www.nrri.umn.edu/
Recent advances in nondestructive assessment technologies offer opportunities to evaluate hardwood raw materials, particularly the potential quality of material that is to be used in the manufacture of high value specialty products. Several commercially available nondestructive evaluation technologies are currently being utilized to sort and grade materials including trees, logs, billets and lumber. This project will focus on evaluating several commercially available nondestructive technologies for assessing the quality of material to be used in high value specialty products such as guitars and baseball bats.
1. Conduct tours of guitar and bat manufacturers to clearly understand their raw material specifications, identify types of material defects, and potential implementation options for various nondestructive evaluation technologies.
2. Clearly identify types of defects, material grade parameters, and specific targets for assessment. Conduct root cause assessment to understand fundamental cause of defects, a critical component of selecting technology options.
3. Identify various technology vendors through a comprehensive search to include traditional wood products equipment companies, non-wood/composites equipment companies and university developments. Assemble/review operating principles of commercially available equipment and commercial vendors. Select equipment for assessment in cooperation with industry cooperators for the project.
4. Develop a testing and assessment matrix for use in evaluating equipment/technology.
5. Technologies to be evaluated include vibration, acoustic, tomography, thermography, and laser technologies for identifying critical materials defects and for assessing potential product performance on hardwood materials prior to manufacturing into guitars and baseball bats.
6. Conduct a comprehensive assessment of identified equipment with hardwood and softwood material provided by cooperators. Based on the assessments, identify options for modification or improvement of these technologies for a second trial.
7. Develop and deliver a web-based seminar for hardwood sawmills, hardwood suppliers and secondary wood products manufacturers to provide training and information on the potential use of these technologies for grading those hardwood components.
8. Prepare a final technical report with recommendations for applying nondestructive evaluation technologies for sorting high-value hardwoods.
9. Establish two demonastration decks using thermally-modified wood.
Project is complete. A webinar was developed outlining a number of technologies available for use with high value hardwoods. It included information on technologies, vendors, applications and recommendations for use of NDE for high value products. This webinar is available at the following web locations:
Part 1: https://umconnect.umn.edu/p18688686/
Part 2: https://umconnect.umn.edu/p97907608/
For detailed results of this project, please see the references below.
