The pliability of wood and its application to molding

The feasibility of using wood as a substitute for plastics was examined. Wood is primarily processed by cutting and gluing, but these processes are often complicated and the shapes of products and productivity are limited. Productivity would improve dramatically if efficient molding methods, such as extrusion and injection molding, could be applied to the processing of wood. In this study, the effect of moisture content on the pliability of wood, anisotropy, and the effect of anisotropy on formability were examined. The pliability improved as moisture content increased. This is considered to be due to the softening of hemicellulose and lignin in the presence of water. The deformation perpendicular to the fiber orientation was dominated by the disassociation of the fibers at the interface between fibers and required relatively low pressure. Conversely, deformation in the fiber orientation required cutting of the fiber cells and higher pressure. Backward extrusion was performed to examine the influence of the fiber orientation of raw materials on formability and fiber orientation was observed to have a major influence on formability. It was possible to improve the quality of the molded product and decrease the load required by controlling the fiber orientation of the raw materials.