With the pressures on our industry at this time, sawmills are using thinner saws to try and improve recovery without reducing current production levels. This has led to washboarding becoming a widespread problem in the industry. Washboarding is a wavy pattern that appears on the surface of lumber due to excessive vibration of the sawblade as it cuts through the lumber. In this study the washboarding behaviour of saws was studied at both the analytical and experimental levels to develop a much better understanding of the problem and lead to a set of guidelines for industry use.
This was a joint project between Forintek Canada Corp. and The University of British Columbia. Dr. S. G. Hutton led the analytical side of the work and Dr. J. Taylor the experimental portion of the work. This report is a portion of the overall research endeavour and presents the results of the experimental work that was conducted.
To compliment and validate the analytical portion of the work a series of cutting tests were conducted to examine the washboarding phenomenon and the factors that influence its occurrence. The effects of wheel rotation speed, strain, tooth bite, and depth of cut were examined and their effects recorded. As small changes in tooth design are known to influence a saws washboarding behaviour, but are not accurately predicted by the mathematical models, we also carried out cutting tests with saws of different thickness and tooth pitch, progressively increasing the length of the tooth face and the depth of the gullet until washboarding on the lumber surface was quite severe. In this manner we hoped to be able to develop some guidelines for the industry.
It was apparent from the initial tests that there were two types of washboarding. We have called the larger diagonal waves that often appear with industrial sized bandsaws, Type I. The narrow more vertical pattern or that on circular saws is called Type II. The results in this report are primarily associated with Type I and show the somewhat insensitive nature of the washboarding instability to changes in the operating parameters. The occurrence of washboarding is more sensitive to changes in the tooth geometry.