Study on the Air Dust Level During Drilling Processes of Wood Based Panels

A study was conducted to analyze theproduction of particles during drilling processes withdual-spiralled twist drills, at different feed speeds onMDF, particleboard and multi-ply plywood. Themeasurement of wood dust particles was carried outvia a particle scan instrument which measures theconcentration of wood dust particles [milligrams percubic meter or particles/l] present in the air. A total of46 tests were performed with an average number of 8repetitions for each material.The measurement results showed thatdifferent materials provide different amounts of totaldust and size distribution during drilling processesunder the same working regime.The largest quantity of particles was producedby multi-ply, followed by MDF and particleboard. Theaverage times, in which the quantity of particlesreaches the initial state of the tests, were fast andhomogenous. Regardless the type of material, thenumber of particles produced resulted in a greateremphasis on small feed speed. Most of the particlesproduced, were recorded for small sized classes ( ≤ 1μm), where most of them were occupied by microfines particles with 0.3 to 0.5μm diameter.