Millions of tons of lumber goes to landfills every year. Eric Law is out to change that. Eric and his team at Urban Machine have designed a machine that automates the removal of nails and screws from reclaimed lumber, making that lumber usable again. Eric explains how he settled into this niche. He spent 20 years working in various parts of the technology and construction industries. He was leading a sustainability initiative when he noticed that steel and concrete get recycled but the lumber was all going to the landfill. What kept it from being reused or recycled? Well. It was the nails, of course. He approached Andrew Gillies and Alex Thiele about using automated robots and computer vision to address this problem. The three of them decided this was a solution worth pursuing, and they launched Urban Machine. Here’s the process:
- Humans take out the big, ugly fasteners.
- They polish up the remaining fasteners to help the machine spot them.
- A device resembling a bird beak removes those remaining fasteners.
- The piece goes through a metal detector to ensure that the piece is clean.
Eric shares about the first few iterations of the machine. After a mishap with the first large stationary model, they decided to make the unit mobile. It is now mounted on a 40’ flatbed truck. Computer vision enables the operator to see a cross-section of the wood and provide several data points not usually available for individual pieces purchased from the lumber yard. The team is working toward the inclusion of a QR code that will share this info with the end user and take them to a website that shares the wood’s back story. Eric explains that their equipment enables them to do extensive examinations of reclaimed glue-lam pieces in order to ensure its structural integrity. We discuss Urban Machine’s business and pricing models. Sometimes they work with owners who want to reuse lumber during a remodeling project. In this case, they receive a dollars-per-board-foot rate to process lumber to be reused onsite. In other cases, they partner with demolition companies and then resell the lumber. The machine has an impressive design volume of 2.5 million board feet per machine per year. That’s 16,000-20,000 board feet or about a truckload a day for each machine. As the team handles more projects, they’re working toward formulas to more accurately estimate the amount of reclaimable lumber in particular types of buildings based on the building’s construction and age. We discuss Urban Machine’s future. By 2024 they plan to have 12 trailers ready for different markets around the country. Beyond that? Well, it would take 6,000 of their machines to capture 50% of the wood that’s thrown away in the US each year. We discuss the massive sustainability benefits of reducing dependency on virgin lumber that needs to be kiln dried. Then it needs to be trucked across the country. We also touch on the possibility of carbon credits. “Every metropolitan area is a forest for us,” Eric explains. Eddie asks about how the demolition process needs to change in order for the wood to remain intact enough to be run through the machine. We wrap up with some speculation about the ripple effects of this kind of reclamation into peripheral businesses for distributing and using reclaimed wood. Eric’s Megaphone Message: We can create a circular economy for wood. And we can do it in a way that doesn’t just save money but also reduces environmental impact and includes the back stories and historical connections of wood. Find Eric Online:
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