The Westervelt Company purchased its first planer mill automated grading system from Lucidyne Technologies. Their lumber division (Moundville, AL) is the largest Southern Yellow Pine production facility in North America. Westervelt made this purchasing decision despite a poor economy and weak lumber industry projections because extensive testing of their lumber with leading suppliers of linear and transverse systems indicated that Lucidyne's GradeScan would provide a significantly higher rate of return on investment. The purchase includes new Lucidyne Trimmer/Sorter Controls and a new M5 Grade Mark Reader

Sierra Pacific Purchases Another GradeScan^®

Sierra Pacific Industries purchased its fifth Lucidyne GradeScan^® system for installation in its Aberdeen, Washington mill. Sierra processes several species and grades, including Dimension, Common, and Decking, with sizes ranging from 1x4 to 4x12 and 6x6 timbers. The purchase comes after two successful installations in SPI mills this year, one in Burlington, Washington in January 2010 and the second in Lincoln, California in March 2010.

Sawmill Shares GradeScan^® Board Data with Customer

Weyerhaeuser at Princeton BC used GradeScan's RuleScribe to develop a new product for an I-Joist manufacturer. Normally, a lumber vendor would have to ship a car load of the new product to the client for suitability testing before acceptance. In this case their client, Louisiana Pacific at Red Bluff, California is also a GradeScan customer. Instead of shipping lumber, the Princeton mill sent scanned lumber computer files via the Internet. The files were optimized off-line in Red Bluff on their GradeScan^® system using LP proprietary grade rules. Both parties saved thousands of dollars in lumber and shipping costs!

Australian Mill trims for Moisture and Low MOE

Our latest GradeScan^® installation is the Hyne & Son Tuan planar mill in Tuan, Queensland, Australia. Once Lucidyne's engineers placed the system in automatic it stayed there and has not been switched out since! Hyne's GradeScan system can trim based on moisture pockets and regions of low MOE. Their output of stress graded lumber has increased dramatically. "Our product has never been straighter"...They hadn't realized that their graders just were not able to effectively grade for warp because now the warp system is working so well that all their packages look beautiful.

LP Reduces Material Costs

Louisiana Pacific at Red Bluff, California received a new software module that allows them to scan two new species, Hem-Fir and Larch DF. Now they can take advantage of reduced material costs for the new species.

GMR Uses Solid-state Lighting System