Ranking of wood species for automated ornamental carving on CNC router using madm approach

Abstract

The wood has been recognized as one of the best alternative material for ornamental carving since time immemorial. It has got anisotropic properties as well as occurrence of random defects in different extents depending upon the species. In the present work, an attempt has been made to grade the wood varieties (domestic and imported) that are generally used for ornamental as well as furniture making in India. Also there are some wood species which may find usefulness in making furniture or some industrial applications may not be suitable for CNC carving. Therefore, while selecting a wooden raw material for CNC carving operation, one must possess good knowledge about the desired carvability properties of wood so that high machining rates and good surface finish can be realized simultaneously. Thus based upon local requirements of a particular geographic location, a scientific grading system can be applied for ranking of available wood varieties for CNC router based carving operations. The grading of woods has been done in order to get an exclusive carvability data about the wooden species for CNC wood machining, so that one can get maximum possible surface finishing and maximum material removal rate form selected wooden stock. The MADM-TOPSIS approach has been used in order to rank different types of domestic and imported timbers available in India, taking care of factors such as carvability properties, cost and availability. This ranking can be used for getting better results for carving operations, and the logical conclusions of the study has been presented in our dissertation.