Technology

Woodworking Industry News

Taking the fingerprint of smuggled wood

Chemists at the US Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) have been developing a method to identify trafficked wood on the spot using chemical fingerprinting. The USFWS has been instrumental in developing this technique for wood identification and sharing it with law enforcement labs around the world. The technique is called direct analysis in real time mass spectrometry, or DART-MS for short. Today, the suite of molecules it measures can be used to rapidly identify the species, and sometimes even the region, a piece of wood came from.

Woodworking Industry News

Egger invests more than $42 million to increase production capabilities and capacity

Wood-based materials manufacturer Egger Wood Products has started production on a third lamination line at its Lexington, N.C. facility. The $21 million investment will expand the company’s thermally fused laminate (TFL) production capacity by 50%, increasing production to more than 155 million sq. ft. per year, and alleviate supply chain and logistical challenges for customers.

Woodworking Industry News

Simpson Strong-Tie acquires EstiFrame Technologies

Simpson Strong-Tie, a manufacturer of engineered structural connectors and building solutions has acquired Elk Grove, Calif.–based EstiFrame Technologies Inc. Founded in 2017 by Coby Gifford and Aaron Love, EstiFrame provides component manufacturing and framing technologies to the construction industry, including the EasyFrame automated marking system that matches saws with digital printers to label 2x frame members for fast and accurate assembly.