Plywood Production: From Hand Veneer to ABB Robots

Plywood production from Egyptian veneer and Nobel's rotary lathe to vision graded veneer and panel repair robots, and where ABB robots fit in the mill.

INDUSTRIAL ROBOTICS

Chat With Robot

10/13/20265 min read

A sheet of plywood looks simple: thin layers of wood glued with the grain crossed, pressed flat and cut to size. Plywood production still involves a lot of lifting, sorting and repair work, and much of it has been done by hand for a century. This post follows the material from early hand cut veneer to the rotary lathe and the hot press, then looks at the vision systems and robots that now grade veneer and patch panels in mills. It ends with where ABB robots already work with veneer, where they could fit in a plywood mill, and what still holds automation back.

Large log turning in a rotary lathe with a pale sheet of veneer rolling off it

A rotary lathe peels a log into a continuous sheet of veneer at a plywood factory in Sandakan, Sabah, 2016. Photo: CEphoto, Uwe Aranas / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)

How plywood went from hand veneer to rotary lathes

Layered wood is very old. Examples of rudimentary plywood go back to about 2600 BC in ancient Egypt, where thin pieces of wood were glued in layers. For most of history veneer was sawn or sliced by hand and used on fine furniture. Industrial use only began in the 1850s. The New York furniture maker John Henry Belter patented a technique in 1858 for making chair backs from layers of wood, and plywood came into wider use in the 1880s.

Tall dark carved wooden chair with a pierced back and a blue upholstered seat

A slipper chair attributed to John Henry Belter, made around 1855 with laminated wood. Photo: Metropolitan Museum of Art via Wikimedia Commons (CC0)

Mass production rests on the rotary lathe, credited to Immanuel Nobel, the father of Alfred Nobel. Instead of slicing a flat board, the lathe turns a log about its long axis while a long blade peels off one continuous sheet of veneer, like unrolling paper from a roll. In the United States, the Portland Manufacturing Company developed modern veneer core plywood for the 1905 Portland world's fair, the Lewis and Clark Exposition, and it was the first to use the 4 by 8 foot sheet that builders still buy today.

Black and white photo of workers at a big lathe with a roll of veneer coming off a log

A veneer lathe in a plywood plant, November 1937. Photo: U.S. National Archives via Wikimedia Commons (public domain)

The rest of the process grew around the lathe. Veneer is cut oversize because it shrinks in the dryer. The sheets are then patched, graded, glued and baked in a hot press, typically at 140 °C or more and around 1.4 MPa. After pressing, panels can be patched again, filled, resized and sanded. Much of that sorting and repair stayed manual for decades. The Finnish machine maker Raute still describes panel repair as the last heavy manual process in plywood production, and links automating it to fewer work injuries and sick days.

Black and white photo of two men lifting thin wood sheets from tall metal racks

Workers handle long sheets of veneer at racks in a plywood plant, May 1942. Photo: U.S. National Archives via Wikimedia Commons (public domain)

Plywood production today, with vision and robots

On 12 October 2026 Wood Central reported that Australia has gone 16 years without large investment in veneer based production, and that Raute, which says it is behind more than half of the world's installed LVL capacity, is pitching a full line to Australian investors. Raute's Juha Kuntola named the size of the investment as the main obstacle. The company offers to train operators across every process and even to run production for a while as a new mill ramps up. It is also testing bluegum, which runs on the same equipment as radiata pine with different settings.

Factory building with a tall brick chimney, log piles and snow under a blue sky

The plywood mill at Säynätsalo, Finland, in winter, 2011. Photo: Antti Leppänen / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)

Inside existing mills, machines are taking over the sorting and repair. Raute introduced its Panel Repair Station R5 in 2020. Panel World reported that it uses machine vision to find defects, makes up to 300 panel face repairs an hour, and can run with one operator or none, saving up to 20 percent of repair filler. Boise Cascade has patented systems in which vision grades each veneer sheet and robots with vacuum heads move it to the right stack, so sheets are not damaged by hand handling.

Man in a yellow shirt pressing buttons on a control desk beside conveyor machinery

An operator at a control panel in a plywood factory in Sandakan, Sabah, 2016. Photo: CEphoto, Uwe Aranas / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)

We found no ABB robot in a plywood mill, though ABB arms do work with veneer. At the University of Kassel, researchers wind 48 mm wide, 0.5 mm thick veneer tape around forms to make light load bearing ceiling elements and pillars. They started with two compact ABB IRB 1200 robots, moved to two IRB 4600 arms with up to 2.55 m reach, and tested programs in RobotStudio first. In a mill, an IRB 660 or IRB 460 palletizer could stack finished panels, and an IRB 6700 with a vacuum gripper could feed a press, although we found no mill that has tried either.

White ABB robot arm with a reel of thin wood tape wrapping it around a black form

An ABB robot winds veneer tape around a form at the University of Kassel. Photo: EDEK, University of Kassel / ABB

What comes next for plywood mills

Factories are heading toward a line where vision decides and robots carry. Grading cameras already sort veneer by defects, and robot stackers can put each sheet on the pile for its grade. The next step is linking those decisions across the mill, so patching, lay up and pressing know which grade is coming. For an arm handling 4 by 8 foot panels, reach and payload matter more than speed, and track mounted robots on external axes can serve several stacks from one arm.

Orange ABB four axis palletizing robot stacking goods at the end of a line

An ABB IRB 660 palletizer, a robot type that could stack finished panels. Photo: ABB

Plywood reaches homes through furniture, cabinets and building work, and researchers are also trying veneer in places where heavier materials are normal. The Kassel elements are light enough to add storeys to existing buildings, and the researchers want to make facade profiles that use less aluminium. Our post on mass timber panels covers the larger engineered wood elements made from boards. Small plywood users at home will see little of this, except perhaps more consistent sheets and fewer patched faces on the shop shelf.

Tall latticed wooden columns holding a honeycomb wooden ceiling in a hall

Lightweight columns and ceiling of robot wound veneer from the University of Kassel, on show in an exhibition hall. Photo: EDEK, University of Kassel / ABB

Cost is the first barrier, and the Wood Central report shows how big the bill for a new mill is before any robot is added. Safety is another. Full panels are heavy and awkward, presses run hot, and any arm working near people needs monitored zones, which SafeMove can supervise. Then there is wood itself, which varies from log to log and species to species, so vision systems need tuning when a mill changes timber. Skills are the last gap: Raute's offer to train operators for every process shows that the people running a mill must learn the machines as well as the wood.

Man watching an ABB robot arm wrap veneer around a long column on a turning rig

A researcher next to an ABB robot winding a veneer column on a rotating axis at the University of Kassel. Photo: EDEK, University of Kassel / ABB

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