Microtec regrets the sad announcement that Peter Charles Matthews, one of the fathers of the tracheid effect, passed away last Saturday, aged 74, following a short illness.
Peter C. Matthews and Berry G. Wilson discovered the grain deviation effect that laser light has on wood. Their collaboration with Microtec and Federico Giudiceandrea started in the late 90s after meeting in the US. While working on scatter technologies, Mr. Matthews used to visit Microtec's facilities in Brixen several times.
Matthews and Wilson invented a method for measuring fiber angle in a fibrous solid material, which is particularly well suited for measuring diving grain, grain surface angle and fiber orientation in wood, enabling high accuracy knot detection. Several patents for this invention have been registered.
"I would like to express my deep felt compassion to Peter's family and friends and express my admiration and praise for the innovative work he achieved. Microtec and the wood processing family bow to Mr. Matthews' exceptional attainments." states Microtec CEO Federico Giudiceandrea.
Peter had been enjoying his retirement over the past few years. His innovations will always be commemorated.
The laser is generated, bundled and projected onto the board. Due to the different properties of the board and wood fibers, the laser light is being reflected accordingly. Highly sensitive cameras register the reflected laser light while powerful algorithms and processors are able to promptly analyze the geometrical and optical characteristics of the board.
Laser technologies are used to recognize characteristics of wood fibers, knots, resin, stains and more.
Peter C. Matthews discovered the grain deviation effect that laser light has on wood. While working on scatter technologies, Peter used to visit Microtec's facilities in Brixen several times.