Disposable Knife System

In the manufacturing of OSB and other similar engineered wood products, knives are employed to process logs and produce raw materials (strands) in dimensions that are required by the process.

Desirable attributes of the knives include a sharp edge, consistent dimensions, and strength properties to allow adequate production uptime. Kadant Carmanah's disposable knife system offers significant advantages over plate knives with approximately 80% of the company’s installed base of stranders in North America choosing disposable knives.

Features

Light
Easy to maintain and replace
Consistent counter knife angle
Superior strength and wear properties
Extremely accurate dimensions and tolerances

Benefits

Safe handling – Light, small, and easy to handle
Safe operation – Eliminate wood packing & knife pack separation
Quick to change – 15-30% reduction in knife change time
Eliminate need for a grinding room or grinder
Increase knife life by 20-100%
Improve strander utilization by 1-2%

Elimination of the Grinding Room

The disposable knife system eliminates the need for a grinding room and associated grinding machinery. Additionally, the labor required to assemble and disassemble plate knife packs and perform the grinding operation is eliminated with disposable knives.

Knife Location Tuning

The disposable knife system allows per pocket tuning to address small tolerances that exist from knife pocket to knife pocket. The ability to target a more consistent projection between knives offers measurable improvement in strand quality – not uncommon for a mill to see several percent decreases in fines generation with disposables over plate. Also, most mills experience fewer knife changes as more consistent knife projection minimizes high and low knives meaning the cutting task is more evenly shared.

Safety

Compared to a plate knife pack weighing 12 to 25 lbs. (depending on machine type), the disposable knife weighs less than a pound. Considering the significant weight of the plate knife pack with the required assembly/disassembly and associated grinding/cleaning combined with handling while installing and removing from the strander, the opportunity for injury is considerably higher when compared to the disposable knife.