Patent ID: 6624883
Filing Date: 2003-09-23
Classification: G01B,G01N

Abstract:
A method of determining wood grain orientation, which comprises the steps of:a) projecting a beam of linearly polarized laser light onto a wood surface to produce a dot-matrix laser image comprising elliptically polarized emergent laser light and linearly polarized reflected laser light; b) separating the elliptically polarized emergent laser light, which carries grain orientation information, from the linearly polarized reflected laser light, which is sensitive to wood surface roughness, by employing a polarizer; c) intensifying the elliptically polarized emergent laser light by employing a variable voltage source to increase the linearly polarized incident laser light and a polarizer to suppress the linearly polarized reflected laser light; and d) processing the image of the elliptically polarized emergent laser light, which is an oriented laser image, to determine the wood grain orientation.