Facilities
The Institute has multifarious infrastructure facilities for carrying out investigations and conducting experiments at laboratory levels and trials at pilot scale levels simulating conditions existing in factories in the field of wood, plywood and other panel products from lignocellulosic materials. These facilities help in effective implementation and easy adaptation of technologies developed at the Institute by the Industries
Plywood Plant
The plywood plant comprises of machinery for manufacture of plywood and other wood based panel products of commercial size, established under FAO/UNDP/Govt. of India project. The important machines in the plant are Peeling lathe, Veneer Slicer, Clipper, Dryer, Guillotine jointer, Splicer, Core Composer, Glue Spreader, Glue applicator, Pre-press, Hot presses, Trimming machine, Sander, etc.
Saw Mill
The sawmill is well equipped with machines for sawing timbers of any size, including plantation timbers of small girth. Kiln seasoning plant for sawn wood is also installed for training for mechanical wood industries technology. The main machines in the mill are Band Headrigs, Band re-saws, Narrow band saw machines, Edgers, Multiple rip saw machine, Cross-cut machines, Thickness planer, Four side planer, Vertical spindle moulder, etc.
Finger-Jointing and Edge Lamination
In this set up, facilities are available for fingerjointing of timbers especially wood sections from short length and small girth plantation timbers and for producing timber of wider size by edge lamination techniques and for making beams by glulam techniques. The vital machines in the section are Finger-shaping machine, Finger-gluing machine, Fingerpressing machine, Pneumatic clamp carrier, etc.
Sawdoctoring
The servicing and maintenance work for tools used in wood working machines such as knives, saws, cutters are carried out in saw-doctoring shop which was set up under FAO/UNDP/Govt. of India funded project for training purpose and it is one of the largest in South East Asia. The important equipments installed in saw-doctoring are Leveling and tensioning machines, Band saw and Circular saw sharpening machines, Stellite tipping machines, Tungsten carbide Tipping and Grinding machine, Cutter grinding Sawdoctoring machines, MIG welding machine, Brazing equipment, Grinders for Peeling knife and planer knife etc.This facility is also open to Industries for servicing of wood cutting tools.
Centre for Bamboo Development (CBD)
The centre has machinery for primary processing of bamboo and machines for developing bamboo laminates and bamboo mat panel products. The main machines concerned with these activities are Bamboo cross-cutting machine, Bamboo splitting machine with knife and circular saws, two side planer, four side planer, Slivering machines, Bamboo mat corrugated press, Bamboo laminate press, Hydraulic press fitted with moulded dies to manufacture, Bamboo mat moulded skin door, Facilities like Centre for Bamboo Development (CBD) Bamboo Cross Cutting machine, External Knot removing machine, Internal Knot removing and flattening machine, Edge Cutting of Flattening Bamboo machines to develop a process for the manufacture of flattened bamboo boards from raw bamboo.
Maintenance Workshop and Carpentry Shop
The institute has a maintenance workshop for taking care of repair and maintenance works of machines installed in various plants and mills and also for fabrication of small equipments, instruments, jigs, fixtures, accessories etc. Maintenance Workshop
There is a carpentry shop which caters to the development of furniture, joinery and other housing components as needed under different R&D projects. The test specimens as per BIS standards required for testing various types of panel products are also prepared in the carpentry shop.
Wood Preservation Lab
The lab has facilities to take up investigations on preservatives for protection of wood and other panel products from Fungi, Borers, Termites, etc. It has also facilities for wood identification. The important equipments available are Incubation chamber, Humidity chamber, Ultraphot microscope, Binocular microscope, Microtome, etc.
In addition, for large scale application of preservatives/Vacuum pressure, impregnation plant and Boucherie process plant are also available for research and training.
Adhesive Technology Lab
The lab has facilities to undertake development of adhesive system based on synthetic resin, evaluation of resin characteristics, testing of resin as per relevant BIS standards, analysis of raw materials used in resin preparation and preservative chemicals etc.
The main equipment available in the lab are Resin reactors, Brookfield viscometer, pH meter, High Pressure Liquid Chromatography (HPLC), Computer Operated Smoke Density
Apparatus, Humidity chamber, Differential Scanning Calorimeter (DSC), Atomic Absorption Spectrometer (AAS), etc.
Mechanical Testing Lab (CENTEC)
Facilities are available in the lab for testing wood, plywood and other panel products from lignocellulosic materials as per relevant BIS specification.
The major equipments are UTM [25T, 10T, 5T, 2T] Door testing equipments, Humidity chamber for door testing, E-Tester [mechanized], Ovens, Hot water bath, Vacuum pressure test apparatus, NDT equipments, Modulus sonic and ultrasonic equipments, Abrasion tester, Acoustic Pulse Tester, Shear/ Mechanical Testing Lab (CENTEC)
Scratch Tester, Fire resistance test apparatus, Thermal conductivity apparatus, etc.
Particle Board Plant
Manufacture of good quality plywood requires defect free wood. At present in India, about 80% timber for plywood comes from short rotation trees of plantation origin. Conversion ratio from such timber is low and higher grade plywood is difficult to be made from such timbers.
Particle board is an alternative panel to plywood. Manufacture of particle board can be done with any type of wood and other lignocellulose material and conversion ratio is higher than plywood.
Particle board industry in India does not have a strong foundation parallel to plywood due to lack of technical know-how, indigenous machinery and partly due to customers reluctance to accept the product.
Establishment of Pilot Plant for Particle board at IPIRTI will serve many purposes:
1. The plant is set up with entirely indigenous machinery which will encourage the industry to set up bigger plant with indigenous machinery.
2. Exploration of the suitability of various timber species, soft and hard for particle board manufacture.
3. Development of suitable adhesive with low formaldehyde content and standardize process parameters.
4. HRD through training for supporting the industry.
5. R & D for product development
Formaldehyde Emission Test Chamber
To evaluate the steady level of formaldehyde emission a 1 m3 formaldehyde emission chamber has been fabricated as per the specification of EN 717-1 and ISO/DIS 12460- 1 and installed at IPIRTI. Volatile organic compounds and formaldehyde for the sample drawn from building materials and interiors can be measured in this chamber. This chamber method determines the formaldehyde emission at steady state from wood based panels under defined conditions relating to average conditions in real life. This method is also applied to estimate the formaldehyde concentrations under various conditions in practice by the use of mathematical models.
Testing of particle board and plywood's of 1 m2 surface area as per EN 717 and ISO/DIS 12460-1 will be carried out and the report will be issued as per the international requirements. No National Standard has so far been formulated to safeguard the interest of users of wood based panels. It is therefore, utmost necessary to standardize the manufacturing process and test method to determine the optimum level of formaldehyde emission in the finished products and formulate national standards.
Peeling lathe for processing plantation timbers
As large number of plywood industries in the country is utilizing plantation timber species for production of plywood, the new facility will simulate factory conditions. It also helped in creating a pilot plant scale production line of 1.2 m x 1.2 m size plywood.
A new facility was added for carrying out R & D and training activities in the Institute by the installation and commissioning of 1.2 m size peeling lathe.
Ultra filtration equipment
A new pilot plant facility consist of three Column having three different size ceramic membrane consist of two stainless steel (SS) tank, of 40 liters capacity has been recently established at IPIRTI. These three vertical membranes are connected with feed pump (3HP).
This equipment is meant to fractionate chemicals in mixture into definite molecular fractions by passing through micro-sieve of ceramic column. Using this equipment various molecular mixture present in waste black liquor will be fractionated into various molecular weight range and the same were used for manufacture of adhesive for wood based panel products.
Microscope with software analysis system
The microscope having Trinocular observation tube with UIS2 (Universal Infinity System) optical system, objective optical magnification 4x to 100x oil immersion along with 10x eye piece magnification has been installed at IPIRTI, Bangalore. This microscope is attached with ProgRes® capture Pro 2.6 camera with image analysis software to measure the cell structure like length, width, diameter and other features. It is useful to identify the wood samples and to study their anatomical characteristics.
In addition to this we can study the physical characteristics of the insects.
