Hello,

It has been observed that word ‘wood chips’ has been often used to describe wood refuse of varied nature.

- Sometime people imagine / understand it like potato chips. This creates misunderstanding about the suitability of the equipment to be used. Then one is likely to assume that the wood chips are very nice, easy to handle, easy to crumble and thereby easy to handle by equipment. Such assumption and vagueness can create problem later on between buyer and supplier.

- Sometime it is used for describing vegetable plants / twigs etc. nicely chopped by rotary blades; for output of finite size and hence easy to break. Well such material can be handled by varied equipment.

- Wooden powder generated by saw mills. This can be also handled very easily.

- Some time the word is used for refuse / scrapes created by carpenter planer.

- Recently I came across this word used for wooden refuse generated by furniture industry (incidentally comprising of plywood pieces, other wood pieces, etc. of heterogeneous size and shape). If these are not of very abnormal size, these can be handled by conveyor, but not by bucket elevator or screw conveyor, etc.

I think this posting will promote better clarity between buyer and seller about this material to be handled, and thereby result in right kind of equipment to suit the application.

Ishwar G. Mulani

Author of Book: ‘Engineering Science And Application Design For Belt Conveyors’. Conveyor design basis is ISO (thereby book is useful to design conveyors as per national standards of most of the countries across world). New print Nov., 2012.

Author of Book: ‘Belt Feeder Design And Hopper Bin Silo’

Advisor / Consultant for Bulk Material Handling System & Issues.

Pune, India. Tel.: 0091 (0)20 25871916

Email: conveyor.ishwar.mulani@gmail.com Website: www.conveyor.ishwarmulani.com ■