Diamond Oriented Strand Board Case Study

A Solution for the Forest Products Industry
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The Challenge

A manufacturer of oriented strand board was experiencing chain failure during their production process. Production of oriented strand board requires matched sets of roller chain to run in parallel as wood chips are layered onto a forming line.

Using the competitor’s product, the manufacturer experienced uneven wear as the chains ran out of sync resulting product quality issues. In addition, the competitor’s chain attachments were not strong enough to support the grids used to deposit chips on the forming line. When the attachments would break, production had to be stopped.

The Solution

To solve the issue, Diamond recommended its Standard Series chain with Class 2 matching. Diamond offers two levels of length matching – Class 1 and Class 2. Length matching verifies that applications using multiple chains remain in proper relation to each other. For Class 2, it ensures that the longest and shortest chains in a set do not vary in length by more than 0.006″ per foot. To manage the weight of the weight of the chip depositing grids, Diamond also recommended wide-contour bent attachments.

The Result

After six years of using Diamond® Standard Series roller chain for this application, the manufacturer reported that the matched chains continued without failures or product quality issues. Diamond’s wide-contour attachments did not break or lead to production being stopped. As a result, the manufacturer converted all of their machines to use Diamond chain.