Influence of Feed Speed and Cutting Depth During Planing on Surface Roughness of Fir, Poplar and Beech Wood

The roughness of the machined surface is a crucial factor in the woodworking process because it influences the quality of future operations like gluing, sanding, pressing, surface treatment and protection, and assembly. The quality of the machined surface is determined by a number of machining process parameters as well as material properties, and their proper selection and optimization will yield the best results. The purpose of this article is to demonstrate how specific parameters and wood species affect surface roughness. In the experiment, three species of wood: beech (Fagus sylvatica), fir (Abies alba), and poplar (Populus alba) with the same moisture content were used, and combinations of feed speed (5 and 8 m/min) and cutting depth (2 and 4 mm) were created. The processing was done on a wood planer (thickener) machine of the SD-B-510 series manufactured by Robland Machines Belgium. Following that, roughness measurements of Ra, Rz, Rt, and Rq were taken with a focus on the mean deviation of the profile Ra, and an analysis of the results was presented, revealing that different roughness values are obtained with the same processing parameters depending on the wood species. The difference between the greatest (5.36 μm) and lowest (2.41μm) roughness values (Ra) for beech is 2.95 μm, 1.25 μm for poplar, and 1.34 μm for fir.