Woodworking – Special-work machine – Combined
Reexamination Certificate
2001-07-27
2002-06-18
Bray, W Donald (Department: 3725)
Woodworking
Special-work machine
Combined
C144S003100, C144S114100, C144S242100, C144S246100, C144S247000, C144S248400, C144S250130, C144S373000, C144S377000, C144S039000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06405769
ABSTRACT:
BACKGROUND INFORMATION
1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to the field of material-recovery operations. More particularly, the invention relates to the recovery of valuable, usable material from under-utilized and waste-stream material. More particularly yet, the invention relates to the use of material-removing tools in the recovery of usable material from under-utilized and waste-stream material of various shapes and sizes.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Inherent in a manufacturing process is that one or more products are produced according to specifications that define the shape and size of the product, that is, that each exemplar of the product produced by a particular process ideally has a shape and size according to the applicable specification. A particular problem in a manufacturing process in which an exemplar of a product is cut or otherwise produced by a material-removing process is that the material that is left over may have a shape or size that renders it useless for obtaining any more exemplars of the particular product according to specification, though it may contain sufficient material to provide one or more different products. In spite of such collateral use, such left-over material is normally deemed to be scrap and channeled into a waste-material stream in which the material is converted into a low-value chip or mulch by-product, discarded as waste into a landfill, or perhaps burned for fuel.
A sawmill is a typical example of a manufacturing operation that generates left-over material that may be useful material for other operations. The mill takes round logs, often with the bark still attached, and converts them into square and rectangular products. In the sawing process, material forming the outside perimeter of each log ends up as irregularly shaped slabs, edgings, and waney material of random thickness and/or width. The term “waney” as used hereinafter refers to stock or material that has waning, i.e., diminishing, dimensions, such as presented by a tapered piece of wood. Such waney material, however, often contains enough wood from which to obtain one or more pieces of a high-value product, such as uniformly dimensioned stock or blanks for turning or component stock. Although this material is potentially valuable, the sawmill owner is not interested in working with it, as the sawmill is not equipped for processing small pieces of short and/or irregularly shaped wood.
Wood is used in this discussion to illustrate the generation of material that is “scrap” for one particular type of manufacturing operation and a high-value material for another operation. It should be understood, however, that any material-removing process used to create a product will also produce a “scrap” material that may be remaindered, i.e., declared a left-over, material that is valuable and usable for manufacturing other high-value products. Hereinafter, “scrap” material that is usable to create other products will be referred to as “remaindered material”. It should also be understood that, although wood is the material most commonly referenced herein as “the material”, other substances exist that can be used in a material-removing process to form articles or products. These include plastic materials, hard rubber, etc., are therefore also included in the definition of remaindered material in the following discussion of material-recovery operations.
Until now, it has been quite costly to process remaindered material because of the fact that the traditional approach requires several types of machines and several labor-intensive operations to process irregularly shaped pieces of material coming in a range of thicknesses, widths, and lengths, so as to render it useful. As a result, such remaindered material often flows into a waste-material stream or is chipped and burned as fuel. This is not only wasteful in terms of responsible use of natural resources, but cost-ineffective for several reasons.
The wood that is left over after the sawing or other material-removing processes is generally very expensive wood when valued on a cost-per-unit-weight or cost-per-unit-volume basis. Not only is the wood contained in this remaindered material generally jacket wood, i.e., the outer layer of wood on a tree, and the highest quality wood in the tree, it has also passed through one or more processing operations and has been handled extensively. It is economically wasteful not to extract as much value as possible from it. It is an irony that the very wood that is most desirable for manufactured wood products is being discarded as scrap for lack of a cost-effective, efficient way of extracting valuable, usable material from it.
Some manufacturers try to obtain at least some value for the wood left over from the material-removing processes by selling it as fuel, mulch, and/or paper chips. Using remaindered material as fuel has the disadvantage that the material has to be transported to the site where it is chipped and/or burned, thereby further reducing its already nominal value as fuel. Furthermore, there is a limit to the demand for products made from chipped wood fiber. For those reasons and the fact that there is an ever-increasing production of wood chips, chips are becoming less and less valuable as a by-product of wood-processing operations.
Manufacturers have for years attempted to solve the problems inherent in the utilization of remaindered wood, only to discover that it is simply not economically feasible to process material that comes in a range of widths, thicknesses, lengths, or irregular shapes. Such material requires multiple handling and processing steps to convert it into a more workable uniform and valuable product. The only known apparatus on the market for easily and economically converting scrap wood to usable dimensioned stock is a machine designed and constructed by the inventor of the present invention and that has been available for several years. This machine, the YIELD PRO Recovery machine, converts slabs, sawmill and ripsaw edgings, waney stock, and other mis-sized or random-shaped materials into uniform square-edged stock. The YIELD PRO Recovery machine is a large and rugged machine that has separate tool spindles and motors for the horizontal cutting tool and the vertical cutting tool, respectively, a lifting jack with several linear guides on each side of it, as well as a third motor for driving conveyors. This machine is capable of processing slab wood of sizes up to 4″ by 12″, can remove up to one inch of material from the top, and can even process material that has nails embedded in it. Because of its ruggedness, however, and its ability to handle large pieces of wood, this high-volume machine is relatively costly to manufacture and, thus, to acquire. Furthermore, because of its relatively large footprint, requires a lot of floor space.
Primary operations in the wood-products industry include such operations as sawing boards from logs in sawmills; secondary operations include such operations as turning round stock and cutting relatively small component pieces. Although primary operations are the largest source of remaindered material suitable for recovery processes, secondary operations such as furniture-making also provide significant amounts of remaindered material suitable for recovery. Currently, the remaindered material from secondary operations, as well as from primary operations, is treated as waste material and is funneled into the waste stream to be chipped and/or burned.
The remaindered material from secondary operations is generally even more valuable then that from primary operations. For example, in furniture-making operations, the material is likely to be kiln-dried wood that has been through any number of shaping and forming operations. The particular difficulty with recovering usable material from the remaindered material from secondary operations is that the dimensions of this material are typically much smaller than the remaindered material generated by primary operations. On the other hand, a machine that is as rugged a
Bohan Thomas L.
Bray W Donald
Mathers Patricia M.
LandOfFree
Material-recovery apparatus does not yet have a rating. At this time, there are no reviews or comments for this patent.
If you have personal experience with Material-recovery apparatus, we encourage you to share that experience with our LandOfFree.com community. Your opinion is very important and Material-recovery apparatus will most certainly appreciate the feedback.
Profile ID: LFUS-PAI-O-2952807