Wood machining with a focus on French research in the last 50 years

Published Date
March 2016, Volume 73, Issue 1, pp 163–184

Review Paper

First Online: 

30 January 2015

DOI: 10.1007/s13595-015-0460-2

Cite this article as: 

Thibaut, B., Denaud, L., Collet, R. et al. Annals of Forest Science (2016) 73: 163. doi:10.1007/s13595-015-0460-2

Author 

Bernard Thibaut

Email author

Louis Denaud

Robert Collet

Rémy Marchal

Jacques Beauchêne

Frédéric Mothe

Pierre-Jean Méausoone

Patrick Martin

Pierre Larricq

Florent Eyma

Abstract

Key message

Wood machining is compulsory both for timber separation and the surfacing of wooden objects. The anisotropy, cellular nature and multi-scale level organisation of wood make its cutting complicated to study. During the last 50 years, most of the wood machining subjects were covered by French teams.

Context

Woodcutting is a very old technology but scientific research is scarce on the subject. In the last 50 years, much work on basic mechanisms as well as on industrial processes has been done in France.

Aims

The specific nature of wood introduces strong differences between wood and metal cutting processes. The paper focuses on French teams’ contributions.

Results

The basic aspects of the tool–material interaction for different basic modes in woodcutting are highlighted. In primary conversion such as sawing, veneer cutting or green wood chipping, huge progress comes from automation and the possibility of linking the process to log and product quality through new sensors. In secondary processing, much has been done on the links between the cutting process, surface qualification and the properties of these surfaces for further processing, such as gluing or coating. Tool wear depends on the cutting process, timber quality and species. Trade-offs are required in tool technology and coating technologies may improve tool life.

Conclusion

A large amount of knowledge and innovation has come from 50 years of worldwide research effort, with France being particularly active in this period. The transfer of skills from metals cutting industry was often a key, but much is needed to move closer to both metal cutting sector and woodcutting skills among craftsmen.

Keywords

Surface qualityPrimary conversionSecondary processingTool wear

Handling Editor: Jean-Michel Leban

Contribution of the co-authors

Bernard Thibaut was the coordinator of the whole paper and write part of different paragraphs, mainly 1, 2, 3 (with the help of Jacques Beauchêne) and 4. Louis Denaud, Robert Collet, Pierre Jean Méeausoone and Rémy Marchal contribute mainly to paragraph 4 (with the help of Frédéric Mothe) and 6. Patrick Martin and Robert Collet contribute to paragraphs 3, 4 and 6. Florent Eyma and Pierre Larricq wrote paragraph 5 and contribute to paragraph 3.

1. Introduction

A little bit of history

It is commonplace to divide human technological prehistory into periods related to material technology, which can be directly associated with the evolution of woodcutting.

The Wood Age was at the very beginning of the hominin species. The Stone Age is defined by the development of the ability to split flint into tools with sharp edges. It can be seen as the beginning of woodcutting, although animal jaws had been used for a long time for basic operations such as shaping a spearhead (Noël and Bocquet 1987). Oldowan hominin were using flakes of quartzite and quartz in the early Pleistocene (2 million years ago) to cut and scrape wood in the production or maintenance of wooden objects (Lemorini et al. 2014). Woodworking is commonly found in all archaeological layers at a site where Neanderthals lived 125,000–250,000 years ago (Hardy and Moncel 2011).

With the Bronze Age some 5000 years ago and the Iron Age some 3000 years ago, the discovery of metallurgy, and with it the possibility of forging, allowed the production of a large number of new tools with sharp edges and endless geometric forms. This led to a long golden age for woodcutting among a large number of craftsmen, whose innovations were handed down to successive generations for more than 5000 years, reaching a kind of perfection in many woodcutting operations.

The Machine Age is the last big technological revolution, arising some 400 years ago, and is associated with the beginning of material machining (mostly metal and wood to begin with). Most of the striking innovations come from machinery itself and its combination of mechanics and physics (including informatics today).

The use of machine tools was required for metal machining due to the high level of forces in most cutting operations. Research effort since 150 years was mainly put into the machining of metal (Richards 1872), and wood machining was afforded far less attention by researchers although the volume of wood chips and the quantity of woodcutting tools are far bigger than the equivalent for metal cutting. The high level of craftsmanship in many fields of woodcutting gives the impression that everything is known today about woodcutting. However, the transfer of knowledge from woodcutting to wood machining or from craft skills to scientific approaches is not obvious.

The beginning of the 1960s, when Annals of Forest Science was first published, is a key moment in wood machining, marked by the consolidation of scientific works from the post-war period in the reference book Wood Machining Process by Peter Koch (1964). The year 1963 was the year in which The International Wood Machining Seminar (IWMS) was founded, and it continues to gather wood machining scientists from around the world every 2 or 3 years. André Chardin (1920–1987), a pioneer of French wood machining research, was one of the founders of IWMS, but for the first 20 years of that 50-year period he was almost alone with a very small team investigating cutting forces, tool wear, the cutting process and different machining processes (sawing, plaining, peeling or slicing) on many different tropical species (Boulloud 1972; Chardin 1954, 1958, 1962, 1966, 1967a, b, 1968a, b, 1971, 1973). Looking at IWMS proceedings (Table 1) during that period (all 10 of the earliest conferences took place in Berkeley, USA), the USA was the leader of research (with 44 % of the papers) in that period, with Germany (RFA), Canada, Sweden and Norway each representing around 10 % of the papers, and France and Japan accounting each for 5 % (however Japanese scientists in the field had published a lot of work in Japanese and were latecomers to the IWMS conferences). In the last 30 years, which have been more precisely documented by literature databases (Table 2), Japan is the leader; France has improved its standing, being more or less at the same level as the USA now.

Table 1

Number of oral communications at International Wood Machining Seminar (IWMS) during the period 1967–1985, % per main country

IWMS 67–85	USA	Germany	Canada	Sweden	Norway	France	Japan	UK
149	65	16	15	14	14	8	7	5
100 %	44 %	11 %	10 %	9 %	9 %	5 %	5 %	3 %

Table 2

Number of publications dealing with metals or wood machining in the period 1984–2014

Publications	Metals	Percent	Wood	Percent	Metals/wood
1984–1993	174	9	55	16	3.2
1994–2003	638	32	91	26	7.0
2004–2014	1158	59	203	58	5.7
1984–2014	1970	100	349	100	5.6
USA	387	20	43	12	9.0
China	301	15	13	4	23.2
Germany	152	8	30	9	5.1
England	129	7	24	7	5.4
Canada	82	4	21	6	3.9
Japan	76	4	58	17	1.3
France	76	4	45	13	1.7
Sweden	71	4	10	3	7.1

Web of knowledge, using keywords: “wood cutting” or “wood machining” or “cutting of wood” or “machining of wood” for wood, “metal cutting” or “metal machining” or “cutting of metals” or “machining of metals”. Number of publications, % per main country only for the period 1984–2014 and ratio of number between metals and wood

This improvement was the result of a strong impulse from the French government in favour of scientific research in the field of wood science. There were no PhD theses defended in the field of wood machining in the 1964–1983 period, but there were 37 PhD theses in the 1984–2013 period, dealing with most of wood machining subjects as can be seen in the list of PhDs (Abdallah 2011; Aubert 1987; Bonduelle 1994; Bonin 2006; Boucher 2007; Collet 1984; Gauvent 2006; Jouffroy 1999; Levaillant 1978; Martin 1997; Méausoone 1996; Rougié 2009; Simonin 2010; Zerizer 1991 The Wood Machining Group (Groupe Usinage Bois) was established on the initiative of Rémy Marchal in 1993.

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