Structuring wood with Felder structuring machine

With the use of reclaimed wood many have discovered the beauty of weathered wood. That image of wood with its highlighted structure and imperfections created by rain and wind has come to be desired by more and more people. The trend is strong and reclaimed wood isn't always an option or wanted in such extreme rusticity. So in addition to sanding and grading, a new operation has emerged to prepare the wood in white - structuring. Machine manufacturers reacted immediately to this new trend and are offering machines that effectively reproduce this effect. The wood-graining machine manages to 'age' wood in seconds, without effort, dust or special protective equipment. Such a machine isStructure 60.02 of the Felder.

Apart from the fact that working with a machine is quick, simple and efficient, the advantages of using a machine for wood structuring are:

• ease of processing
• reproducible result
• productivity
• the possibility of insertion in technological lines
• obtaining several structures depending on the brushes used or the machine parameters

If these advantages, or at least some of them, are what you're after, a wood structuring machine would help you enormously, and one of the options is Felder's Structure 60.02.The structuring machine is for furniture manufacturers who want to redefine wood surfaces or who want to refurbish old wood.

By using brushes, some of the surface wood is removed and a new, interesting structure with pronounced grooves appears. Why isn't all the wood removed? Because the brushes first remove the softer, looser early wood. As you know, the trees add wood matter each year which in cross-section appears as a ring. The consistency of the added wood is not the same and depends on the time of year. In spring, the material deposited is looser, softer. In summer and early autumn, growth is much slower, the deposited material being dense and hard. When the brushes start to work the early wood is removed and the later wood remains and forms the raised striation pattern.

Structure 60.02 has 2 successive processing stations so it can ensure perfect processing in one pass.

These posts are actually 2 shafts on which the brushes are mounted. The first brush, a 200 mm diameter steel brush, does the coarse structuring, removing soft wood. The second brush, a textile brush (Tynex, grain 60), is the finishing brush, which removes the remaining loose grain from the coarse structure.

Thus, in a single pass, both surface profiling and white wood preparation are done. From here, the wood can go straight to staining and varnishing. Each machining station has its own suction nozzle to collect dust and debris from processing. At the end the resulting wood is clean, as is the working environment.

The wood to be processed can be of different thicknesses and it is important that the machine is as versatile as possible in order to process as many sizes and profiles as possible. With Structure 60.02 this is possible, and wood with width between 30 and 1300 mm and thickness from 3 to 200 mm. It can be used both for machining an old piece of plywood and for structuring a beam or refurbishing an old one (you can see it in the video at the end of the article). The brush lift for thicker pieces is electrically operated and is done at the push of a button.

The conveyor belt of the machine is rubberised, honeycomb type, without butt joint. The lack of jointing makes it very durable, reducing maintenance costs. The speed of movement is variable, between 2.5 and 10 m/min, and can be adapted according to the type of wood. For softer species such as resinous wood, processing can be done at higher speeds because the wood is more easily removed. In hard woods such as oak or frasin, speed must be reduced. The harder wood resists so the brushes need more time to remove it.

The Structure 60.02 wood structuring machine has an ergonomic design, picking up the pieces at a height of 900 mm from the ground. This allows easy linking with other machines in the production flow.

Other advantages of the machine:

• long life and guaranteed stability during processing thanks to the solid chassis and quality construction components
• the hood covering the brush groups is closed and solid - saves time by allowing temporary storage of the parts processed on it
• quick and easy change of structuring brushes

Structure 60.02 is not very large so it can fit very well both on a manufacturing line in a factory and in a larger workshop where wood is processed. With such a machine, weathered wood, burnt wood, reclaimed wood can be brought back to life. You can see all these transformations in the video below.

I hope you find this information useful!