Sunday, August 11, 2013

Stick straightness


Apparently, in the lumber industry “stick” is a technical term. There’s a good definition in “Vision System Detects Defective Lumber-Stacker Sticks,” a case study published on the Process and Control Today website, August 7th 2013.

A stick becomes defective when it’s bent or broken. Back in the days when sticks were placed in the lumber stacker by hand, the human loader would notice such defective sticks and remove them, (which calls to mind the old tongue-twister, “I’m not a lumber stacker, I’m a lumber stacker’s mate, And I’m only stacking lumber cause the lumber stacker’s late.”)

However, automation is not as smart as what was probably classed “unskilled labor” and as a result, broken sticks kept finding their way to the machinery.

Thanks to AMS Solutions however, that problem is now solved. The description in the case study is not especially informative, but I found watching the YouTube video below made it much clearer.





I had hoped to link to the AMS Solutions website, but I’m having trouble finding it. If you know anything about them perhaps you’d be kind enough to share, using the Comment function I’ve so thoughtfully provided.

2 comments:

Gabrielle said...

Here is the website: http://www.amss.ca/

Richard Bellemare said...

The URL for AMS Solutions is www.amss.ca