All of the medium or large capacity (with producing of 5 or more cubic meter of lumber per month) sawmills of Russian Federation can’t allow themselves to sort such a big amount of produced lumber by hand due to economical or logistical reasons. As a result, the growth of demand in mechanical board sorting lines, that started about 15-20 years ago, and continues today. The used equipment and morally and technologically out-of-date equipment is generally supplied. Lumber quality control, optimization and end-cutting on the lines manufactured in the 90-s or in the beginning of 2000 are provided by 1 or several operators. Such solution is not effective under conditions of growing competition in lumber market, production quality is prevailed. Lumber overload in the market causes inflated requirements of clients, price cutting on a low quality product. The product quality and, finally, its price are determined at dry sorting. Dependence on human factor is inappropriate. Mistakes made by operators reduce profit of the whole mill. Important is every percent, every part of percent of yield. Automatic lumber scanners are used very often for solutions of this task. Thanks this equipment has been achieved considerable progress in sorting quality terms and in crosscutting optimization in price. Consequently have increased demands of clients.
“RuScan” made by “AVTOMATIKA-VEKTOR” is all-in-one system which functions as lumber scanner, searching and measuring device of geometry of defects, sort use, species of wood determination, crosscutting optimization. Scanner has been successfully operating for a very long time in different regions of country from Karelia to Eastern Siberia, were sorted millions cubic meters of lumber supplied to different markets with different kinds of specific requirements. In addition to this, this scanner is able to collaborate with the program controlled crosscutting mechanisms and pockets ordering by using of general parameters and settings system. Both of these programs have advanced reporting system based on MS SQL, what is very convenient for analytics and export to other accounting systems. Clients also appreciated the convenience of reporting viewing by using the usual browser.
In March 2020 AVTOMATIKA-VEKTOR patented a method for determining lumber defects, which formed the basis for the second generation lumber quality scanner RuScan 2.0.
Main advantages of RuScan:
System detects geometric and visible defects. Geometric defects are defects of machining: wane, chipping, breaking, twist, bow, crook. Visible defects detected by this system are rot, blue stain, knots, splits, bark, pitch pockets. Defect detection is performed on the basis of GOST 2140-81 "Visible defects of wood, classification, terms and definitions, methods of measurement." Sorting and trimming are based on GOST 26002-83 "Coniferous sawn timber of Northern grading supplied for export", with the possibility to set all parameters. RuScan software has a clear and intuitive interface, comfortable and flexible configurations, which greatly facilitates personnel training and work with it. Introduction of automatic scanner on sorting line is destined to increase productivity of the line, to ensure growth of value of finished products due to optimized decisions, to reduce influence of human factor, to provide a more stable product quality.
Visible defects:
Timber Tracer lumber ends scanner can be used as an additional module for RuScan.
Sorting accuracy of dry sawn timber of spruce and pine is not worse than 90%
To detect defects the system use two or three ramps with cameras and pinspots. Cameras can be on top of the conveyor as well as at both sides. It permits to go without turn of the board and significantly reduce the length of the conveyor required to install the scanner.
To measure thickness and wane the boards use high-speed laser sensors located in 30 or 15 cm along board. They transfer information to the host computer via a digital network without loss of accuracy.
In 2024, work on training the RuScan scanner to assess the quality of lumber made of deciduous trees (aspen, linden, birch) was completed. Now our clients can order an additional software module "RuScan BIRCH LINDEN ASPEN" for sorting lumber made of these species.
