Machine-Vision in Wood Industry

Canada is one of the world‘s preeminent manufacturers of high quality wood products. Forintek, a leading organization in wood products research started developing an online fines measurement system following high level interest from the OSB industry in 2002. Now the analog camera of the original design was replaced with the Prosilica GC650 monochrome digital camera. The GC650 is a fast, VGA resolution camera with a GigE Vision compliant interface. The 1/3 „ CCD progressive scan Sony ICX424 sensor provides excellent image quality and sensitivity. The GC650 was fitted with a 12 mm lens and set to operate 4 feet away from the target at 1/1,000s exposure and 20 frames per second. In addition, technicians at Forintek used the 2x2 binning function that is part of every Prosilica CCD camera in order to further enhance image sensitivity. Today, over 10 OSB mills in Canada, USA and Europe are using the online fines measurement system originally developed by Forintek. A patent has been filed for this technology.