Focus on North America: Kadant Carmanah | 31
Above: KCD Strands on conveyor - top-down view
If the knives – particularly the scoring
knives, which control the length of the strands – get blunt, they damage the strands and create fines.” The company says that the disposable knife system also often offers increased knife life, as well as a simpler knife change procedure, due to much lighter knives. “Knife change times are typically similar between plate and DKS/ISK but we have seen some increased knife life and knife changes are typically easier due to the weight difference. ISK allows for a knife-only change but for DKS, they are required to change out the scoring knife holder at intervals similar to plate systems. One major difference is that the scoring knife holder is loose as compared to a bolted together knife package,” explained Mr Macey.
“It’s the quality of the strands and the
control of fines which has driven Kadant Carmanah’s product development. Companies can accept different amounts of fines, depending on their end-product, but all producers still need to know the quality of production from the strander.” The existing method is to extract a sample of the strands at certain time/volume intervals and laboratory-test the sample for quality and fines content. There are two big problems with this method: the sample size is not representative; and it takes time to produce the results from one small, and now ‘historic’, sample: “Taking occasional samples of the strands is not enough to get a clear picture on quality,” confirmed Mr Macey. Kadant Carmanah’s Argus camera system forms part of the company’s Argus Smart- Connected Technologies (SCT) programme and is establishing strand quality by taking images once per second, on the line, so is far superior to occasional strand sampling and analysis in the lab.
Kadant Carmanah brought the most up-
to-date technology to bear to achieve this end, using Artificial Intelligence (AI) to assist them.
A major move in this direction was announced at Ligna 2025, when it was made known that Kadant Carmanah and Hexion Inc had entered into a collaborative partnership. That may at first seem surprising, as Hexion is probably best-known for its adhesives and additives used in panel manufacture. However, Hexion also has its Smartech artificial intelligence (AI) technology division, which uses AI to improve the manufacturing process of wood based panels and that is where the partnership comes in. “As the global leader in stranding equipment used in the manufacture of OSB, our collaborative partnership with Hexion and its Smartech AI technology is the natural evolution for our flagship SmartRing strander product line and Argus Smart- Connected Technologies platform,” said Todd Macey at Ligna.
He added: “The benefit of this
collaborative partnership for OSB producers will be the full visibility and connectivity they will now have throughout their entire manufacturing process, from the strander to the dryer to the blender to the forming and then the press line. Hexion’s advanced AI and machine learning SmartSystems technology will help stabilise the quality of strands coming from the strander.” ARGUS Smart-Connected Technologies
(SCT) was developed by Kadant Carmanah to provide OSB producers with the data they need to produce better quality strands, improve strander production, and prevent unexpected downtime. “SCT has three different proprietary measuring systems, which optimise the strander in real-time,” explained Mr Macey.
The first of these is ARGUS Log Fill Optimiser (LFO), which is a vision system that scans the log fill level at the strander infeed, measuring the amount of wood the strander consumes in real-time. OSB mills can now modify their infeed for higher fill rates, increased throughput, and improved operational efficiency. As Mr Macey said, without that information, you never know for sure what the quality is. The Argus LFO camera system examines each pocket of logs and looks at the alignment of the logs. “As little as two or three degrees out of alignment can affect the quality of the strands,” pointed out Mr Macey. “These sensors are really key to determining the output of the machine, so the sensors can initiate a mechanism to bump the logs and straighten them out.” This is where the Argus LFO comes in, while the Log Deck Optimiser (LDO) tells operators the volume of wood staged on the log deck, prior to feeding into the load pocket. When combined with ARGUS- LFO, operators have full visibility over the strander feed system, allowing the delivery of consistently full batches into the strander. The second component of the Argus
Smart-Connected Technologies is the Argus Condition Monitoring & Intelligence system (CMI). This combines existing Strander PLC tags with a series of condition-monitoring sensors that have been installed across all strander components and assemblies, to collect and analyse data-driven insight about how the strander is operating in real time. OSB mills can now identify bottlenecks at the strander and detect equipment anomalies in real-time and take immediate action to avoid unexpected downtime. “You need to know the quality of the strands being produced as well as the condition of the strander because it will
www.wbpionline.com | October/November 2025 | WBPI
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