Tool wear when cutting wood fiber-plastic composite materials

Wood fiber-plastic composite materials, a relatively new material, are finding applications mainly in the US residential and commercial construction markets. Thus, the volume of material produced and used is steadily increasing while the range of applications keeps expanding. So far, attention has been paid mainly to primaiy production processes of wood fiber-plastic materials, while secondary manufacturing processes have attracted less attention. Ilowever, with the broadening applications of such materials and their increasing use, secondary manufacturing processes for wood fiber plastic materials are gaining importance. This study investigated the performance of five commercially available wood fiber-plastic composite materials and solid wood (eastern white pine)with respect to tool wear and resulting material surface roughness. Large performance differences between different wood fiber- plastic composite materials and between solid wood and wood fiber-plastic composite materials with respect to tool wear were found. Solid wood did wear the exchangeable tungsten carbide knives with a standard cobalt binder and ultrafine carbide grain knives used for the tests 12 to 42 times less than the wood fiber-plastic composite materials. 1 lowever, some wood fiber-plastic materials were found to have a smoother surface than solid wood after 38.2 m of cutting. As this research showed, different wood fiber-plastic composite formulations behave differently when subjected to secondary manufacturing processes. and causes for those observations. more research is needed to better understand the underlying causes for those observations. © 2011 Forest Products Society.