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CONFIDENTIAL
Wood science information that could easily
be used to improve detection

Revision History:
Rev
1.0

Date
13/02/2008

Author
GR

Notes
First Version

Summary:
1

INTRODUCTION ......................................................................................................................................... 2

ABOUT PITH ................................................................................................................................................ 2

ABOUT PITH AND KNOTS ....................................................................................................................... 3

ABOUT PITH AND THE ORIGIN OF THE BOARD IN THE LOG ..................................................... 4

ABOUT KNOTS ........................................................................................................................................... 4

Figures:
FIGURE 1: WANE AND PITH
FIGURE 2: PITH AND SPIKE KNOTS
FIGURE 3: ROUND KNOTS
FIGURE 4: KNOTS AND DX/DY
FIGURE 5: GROUP OF SMALL KNOTS

2
3
4
4
5

This information is confidential and is not to be revealed to any third party without the expressed written consent of LuxScan Technologies
S..r.l. The document and all copies shall be returned to LuxScan promptly upon request.

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1 Introduction
This document is a short review of wood science parts that could be used to improve the detection. For
example simple rules could avoid false detection by removing physically impossible cases.

2 About pith
For board that are thick enough (from ~10mm), pith cannot be seen on both side of the board,
in the same location. For thicker board (from ~30mm), it is very unlikely to find pith on both
side of the board, at least for board no longer than 3m.
Pith is never larger than 10 or 15 mm.
Boards which have wane (I mean real wane, which came from the shape of the wood log, not
small wane done by convoying or machining), pith cannot be found in the side of the board
with wane.
Wane

Pith
Log
Figure 1: Wane and pith

This information is confidential and is not to be revealed to any third party without the expressed written consent of LuxScan Technologies
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3 About pith and knots

In a tree, every branch comes from the pith. This means that every knots come from it to. From this
there are few things that can be said:
A big knot with DX/DY << 1, next to the pith is a spike knot.

Spike knots

Pith

DX/DY = 4.86

DX/DY = 4.86

Figure 2: Pith and spike knots

Pith cannot be found in the middle of big round knots

Figure 3: Wrong pith close to a round knot

This information is confidential and is not to be revealed to any third party without the expressed written consent of LuxScan Technologies
S..r.l. The document and all copies shall be returned to LuxScan promptly upon request.

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A knot which is at the same location on the opposite side of pith has to be almost
round (DX/DY ~1).

Round knots on
top of pith

Figure 4: Round knots

4 About pith and the origin of the board in the log

Pith has to be in the middle of a radial part of a board. The radial/tangential module
could be use to remove pith form tangential part.
Pith is in the same direction as fiber (or annual ring for radial board).

5 About knots
Knots cannot have a DX/DY >> 1 (max 3 or 4).
Brown and long shape on the edge of the board has high probability to be brack or pith.

DX/DY = 4.86

Figure 5: Knots and DX/DY

This information is confidential and is not to be revealed to any third party without the expressed written consent of LuxScan Technologies
S..r.l. The document and all copies shall be returned to LuxScan promptly upon request.

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More than 4 or 5 small knots next to each other have to be wrong detection. It is not
possible to have so many knots close to each other.

Figure 6: Group of small knots

This information is confidential and is not to be revealed to any third party without the expressed written consent of LuxScan Technologies
S..r.l. The document and all copies shall be returned to LuxScan promptly upon request.