WoodTECH Update – Issue 27

Welcome to the latest issue of WoodTECH.News.

A lot can change in a month. While the reopening of New Zealand and most of Australia has been successful, COVID-19 is still a real threat. Victoria is currently facing a second wave that has resulted in a number of Melbourne suburbs in lockdown and the temporary closing of the Victoria/NSW border. It’s not clear exactly how this will impact the forestry sector on the border. A potential travel bubble between the two countries is still on the table. When this occurs and what states will be included are yet to be decided.

For this month’s issue, we’ve included stories on the latest Australian quarterly timber market survey results, news of a new arrangement set up with 3RT for the production automation of manufactured hardwood, Designer HardwoodTM in Australia and a new lignin-based resin developed that’s just been developed for plywood by Latvijas and Stora Enso.

We’ve also included for local saw-doctors, a series of short videos, created by Josh Bergen of Precision Machinery. Josh has been involved in several recent WoodTECH events in this part of the world. The instructional videos cover the measurement of saw guides, use of micrometers and how to measure saw temperatures in real-time.

Next week we’ll start by providing insights into the operational deployment of robotics and automation into manufacturing, case studies on the first two installations of robotics into mills in New Zealand and Australia and a mini-workshop on setting up and using in-mill data dashboards to handle all of that data now been collected in the mill. Late registrations to the series can still be made via the event website. Don’t miss out!

That’s it for this month. Remember to send through any contributions, stories or links that we can pass onto the wider wood processing and manufacturing community.

Check out all the articles below and enjoy this month’s issue.