Apparatus for longitudinally orienting elongated wood strands

摘要

Elongated strands, particularly wood strands, are deposited on a molding belt or a conveyor belt so that the strands are longitudinally oriented relative to each other for manufacturing panels known as oriented strand boards. For this purpose the strands are discharged onto an alignment mechanism or head that has a plurality of rotation shafts each carrying a plurality of disks axially spaced from one another along the respective shaft. These disks form alignment channels when the shafts rotate. Each channel or channel section is further subdivided into strand alignment chambers by a plurality of paddle elements. Preferably four such paddle elements are mounted to the respective rotation shaft between two neighboring disks thereby forming four pass through chambers between two neighboring disks.