page_title: Particle board
section_title: History and development
hierarchical_section_title: Particle board / History and development
caption_attribution_description: English: Particle board manufacturing process
context_page_description: Particle board is an engineered wood product manufactured from wood chips or jute-stick chips and a synthetic resin or other suitable binder, which is pressed and extruded. Particle board is often confused with oriented strand board, a different type of fiberboard that uses machined wood flakes and offers more strength. Particle board also known as “low density fiberboard” is not a form of engineered wood.
context_section_description: Particleboard originated in Germany. It was first produced in 1887, when Hubbard made so-called "artificial wood" from wood flour and an adhesive based on albumin, which was consolidated under high temperature and pressure.
  Although the use of two or three layers of wood veneer is ancient, modern 4-by-8-foot (1.2 m × 2.4 m) sheets of plywood with 5–11 core layers of veneer were invented in the early 20th century, and began to become common by the Second World War. During the war, phenolic resin was more readily accessible than top-grade wood veneer in Germany, and Luftwaffe pilot and inventor Max Himmelheber played a role in making the first sheets of particleboard, which were little more than pourings of floor sweepings, wood chips, and ground-up off-cuts and glue. The first commercial piece was produced during the Second World War at a factory in Bremen, Germany. For its production, waste material was used, such as planer shavings, off-cuts or sawdust, hammer-milled into chips and bound together with a phenolic resin. Hammer-milling involves smashing material into smaller and smaller pieces until they can pass through a screen. Most other early particleboard manufacturers used similar processes, though often with slightly different resins.
  It was found that better strength, appearance and resin economy could be achieved by using more uniform, manufactured chips. Producers began processing solid birch, beech, alder, pine and spruce into consistent chips and flakes; these finer layers were then placed on the outside of the board, with its core composed of coarser, cheaper chips. This type of board is known as three-layer particleboard.
  More recently, graded-density particleboard has also evolved. It contains particles that gradually become smaller as they get closer to the surface
caption: Jute-stick Particle board manufacturing process
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