Before trying to develop an automated inspection system for pallet part grading we analyzed the economics of such a system. Our results suggest that higher quality pallets produced by grading and sorting pallet parts would be attractive to both manufacturers and their customers, who would have to pay increased prices for higher quality pallets. Reductions in costper-trip for the pallet purchase...

Sorting and grading of wooden pallet parts are key factors for pallet manufacturing quality and pallet durability. The feasibility of ultrasonic scanning for defect detection in pallet manufacturing is examined in this report. Scanning was conducted by two pressure-contact rolling transducers in a pitch-catch arrangement. Pallet part deckboards were fed through the transducers and data were col...

We use time-resolved interferometry, fluorescence assays and computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations to examine the viability of confluent adherent cell monolayers to selection via laser microbeam release of photoresist polymer micropallets. We demonstrate the importance of laser microbeam pulse energy and focal volume position relative to the glass-pallet interface in governing the thre...

The Pallet Design System (PDS) is a computer design program developed by Virginia Tech, the National Wooden Pallet & Container Association, and the U.S. Forest Service to quickly and accurately predict the performance of new wood pallets. PDS has been upgraded annually since its original version in 1984. All of the previous upgrades, however, have continued to improve the accuracy of new pallet...

This study proposes a new pallet recognition system using Kinect camera. Depth image of Kinect camera is produced from the infrared ray data of random dot type. This system was applied to an automated guided vehicle(AGV) to recognize the pallet in various conditions. A modularized hardware and software of the pallet recognition system was developed. The performance of the developed pallet recog...

In "price taker" markets, successful businesses are the low cost producers, and pallet manufacturers are no exception. The single largest cost component of pallet manufacturing is raw material costs. Cants and lumber typically account for over 60% of operating costs. In the last three decades, cants have replaced lumber as the primary raw material for hardwood pallet manufacturers. As stumpage ...

Mark Schafer President and Principal Scientist, Sonic Tech Wayne, PA This paper presented the results of several years of testing the use of ultrasound to find structural defects in pallet parts and pallet cants used to produce pallet parts. To determine the magnitude of unsound defects, we inspected full length cants from seven saw mills from Virginia and West Virginia. Split, wane, shake, hol...

Although pallet, as a tool, yields signifi cant and widely recognized economic eff ects in production and distribution systems, it is still not fully utilized, indicating that it needs to be defi ned and developed as a specifi c product. Euro pallet product was designed using PRO/ENGINEER software system CAD module, as one of the most popular CAx systems, yielding a pallet of novel modular desi...

Pallet management, which involves direct and reverse logistic models, may represent a critical activity for logistics provider firms. Pallets are needed in order to ship products from the producers/distributors to the retailers. Recently, pilot projects have demonstrated that performances of pallet management system could be improved by an advance tracking system based on Radio Frequency IDenti...

Hartley, Cosine, Slant and Haar Transforms for Grayscale Image Colorization Using Thepade‟s Transform Error Vector Rotation(TTEVR) Algorithms of Vector Quantization in YIQ, RGB and YCbCr color spaces are compared here for color pallet(codebook) size 32, 64, 128, 256 and 512. Here a color pallet is produced from reference(color) image from which color traits need to be taken using vector quantiz...