General Regularities of Wood Surface Roughness

Abstract

The surface roughness of wood products is depending on many factors related both to wood properties and wood working operational parameters. Probably this is the reason why there are no generally valid correlation determining surface roughness parameters as a function of influencing factors. In particular, the account of wood structure in the surface roughness interpretation proved to be difficult. In the last years an important progress was made in recognizing the role of the anatomical structure of wood species in the attainable surface roughness. The introduction of a structure number made it possible to express and characterize the different wood species numerically. The aim of these studies was the separation of roughness components due to the anatomical structure and the woodworking operation. Using a special finishing technique, the roughness component due to woodworking operations was not significant and could be separated. The same specimens were also subjected to different woodworking operations using cutting velocities between 10 and 50 m/s. The processing of experimental data resulted in a chart showing the minimum roughness component due to different woodworking operations. Special experimental investigation was conducted to clear the influence of edge dullness on the surface roughness, especially on its Abbott-parameters. The measurements showed that the Rk-parameter is a good indicator to predict edge dullness.