NOVEMBER 23, 2018

1.2 ADVANCED COMMUNICATION SKILLS

By ASHI AGARWAL UID, UVARSAD
Email: aashi15feb@gmail.com

FACTORY VISIT

BANSAL PLYWOOD FACTORY, Sitapur, Lucknow (U.P.) is a plywood factory

where Block board, Flush doors and Plywood of different types and sizes are
manufactured and supplied as per the demand of the customers. It is the largest producer of
plywood in its area. The factory is located on the outskirts of the city. I visited the factory on
13th of November with my Grandfather and the owner of the factory “Mr. Pawan Bansal”
guided us through out the visit with each and every minute details of the factory. There
were a lot of machinery used during the process and also an ample amount of human labour
working on it. I was inspired by my teachers to visit the factory as while studying about
plywood I got very curious to know the process behind how actually plywood is
manufactured. So, in the Diwali holidays when I was at my home, I as asked my
Grandfather for the same so he took me to the factory.

Plywood is a wood-based panel product comprised of a collection of veneers that are glued
together with a resin. To sum up the production process; logs are peeled into veneers, the
veneers are lathered in glue, laid up so that the grain direction of each veneer is
perpendicular to its adjacent veneer, pressed together, trimmed and sanded.

As I entered the factory, I was greeted by the manager of the factory he directly took me to
the owner’s cabin. The owner was a very nice person he greeted us very nicely and took us
for the visit of production area and helped us to know the whole process. The first thing that
I saw was the huge lot of logs assembled together. Some labourers were checking the logs
and segregating them into two different bundles. The bad quality of logs was used to make
“Buttons” or “Bakals” further used to make block boards and flush doors and the good
quality of logs went through the De-barking machine which de-barks the log for the
further process. Then the de-barked log went through the Log Peeling machine which is
used for making CORE and FACE veneer. The veneer is then sized as per the requirement
and graded as face veneer and core veneer using the Sizing and Grading machine. The
veneer is wet so for drying the veneer, the Veneer Drying machine is used. Once the
veneer is dried it runs through a Gluing machine which essentially rolls the glue onto the
face and back of the veneer. They are then placed on top of an unglued veneer so that the
stack alternates; Glued, Unglued, Glued, Unglued and so on. The top layer is of the face
veneer then the core veneer layers are placed there as per required and the last layer is also
of the face veneer. Then the most important part comes where the actual panels begin to take
shape. Multiple panels are loaded into the HOT PRESS. Hot press is used for making
plywood using heat and hydrolyc pressure. It compresses and maintains heated pressure
on the boards for a long period of time. This creates and maintains required contact between
the glue and veneers. The steam and the Furness oil used for maintaining the required
temperature and the hydrolyc pressure of the hot press is provided by the Boilers.
Following Hot Pressing, the board is left to stabilise and cool down before further
processing. Then it is a case of trimming down any excess veneer so the board has square
edges using DD Saw Machine, and the boards are most commonly sanded using a large,
industrial Sander. At last, the final product has to be assessed for quality and is rechecked
by the workers and the final stamping is done. The plywood is then ready for dispatch. The
process of manufacturing block boards and flush doors are quite similar just that buttons are
used to make them in between of the required layers of veneer and the Seasoning
Chamber machine is used to dry the wooden planks (Sawl, Chiri) and the Rifshwa
machine is used to make buttons out of the wooden planks by cutting then. The rest of the
process is similar as that of plywood. The workers at the factory were also properly trained
and informative. They showed me each and every process and briefed about it. The manager
informed me that the manufacturing is done by the most commonly logs available in that
area, mostly it is eucalyptus also the face veneer is either imported or manufactured using
high quality of imported wooden logs. He also informed me about the different variety
(Commercial plywood and the Moisture Resistant plywood) and the different sizes (as per
standard requirement) of plywood’s produced there.

The visit was very knowledgeable and also very interesting, I enjoyed the visit and would
like to do more of a kind.