Success story of a research project on the grain angle of wood. A laser shows the grain, and an M-Duino 58 PLC turns the sample on a platform in steps of 3.6 degrees inside a dark chamber, takes orders from the team own image capture software and fills a data set of 9,000 images per species for 60 commercial timber species from Malaysia.

The PDF covers the challenge, the three jobs (step the platform, talk to the software, fill the data set), the system architecture and the hardware used. Interactive version: wood grain angle laser research story online.