The Automated Bond Evaluation System (ABES) is an invaluable tool in evaluating the bonding characteristics of adhesives. The system uses minimal amounts of adhesive and wood while avoiding the difficulties associated with density variations in OSB panels manufactured in the laboratory. The quality and uniformity of the wood substrate can be carefully controlled and the optimum bond between two strands is determined. It is thus possible to evaluate the effect of particle size and resin distribution for different adhesive samples and the performance of an adhesive under very controlled conditions. GluScan is a computer imaging system, developed by Forintek Canada Corp. for evaluating resin distribution on OSB strands.
This study employed the GluScan system to evaluate the particle sizes of commercial powdered phenol formaldehyde OSB adhesive and the ABES system to evaluate the curing conditions required for the resin.