Below is an actual weekly grade check report from a Southern Yellow Pine GradeScan customer. This is not a Lucidyne report, it is formatted by the mill. We have blacked out their name on the top line. During the night shift of the 21st of February, the mill switched to a new load of 2x8's. The above grade for the Number 2's went high and for Number 3 and Number 4, the above grade was out of control.

The problem was an entire load of wood with Blue Stain over most of both wide faces. The stain adjustment for this mill had been set to "very little Blue Stain" at their request when GradeScan was installed. Lucidyne was notified and sample data sent to us via the Internet. Our Image Engineers retrained for the new level of heavy Blue Stain and installed the updated software during the afternoon of the 22nd. Above grade in their number 4 dropped from 18.8% to 4.7% on the stained loads. (See the right hand margin notes on both pages of the audit summary below.) The report also shows that total below grade for the week was #1 = 4%, #2 = 3.7% and #3 = 1.9%.

Since this incident in 2007, Lucidyne has added alarms that notify when grade ratios change from expected historical values. For example, if 30 out of the last 100 boards received a grade of Number 4, an alarm goes off. Our customers can select their own trigger point values and decide what automatic action, if any, should be taken.