There exist today a wide variety of wood polymer composite boards that are commonly called particle boards. Basically, these materials are made from non-chemically processed dry wood particles of various shapes and sizes and either synthethic or adhesive material.
The basic materials from which particle boards are made can be broken down into four basic types:
- Chips – these are wood particles typically used in pulp manufacture.
- Flakes – these are mechanically sliced wood particles and are usually one-tenth of an inch thickness.
- Ribbons – these are wood particles of a specific thickness but varied in length.
- Shavings – these are wafer-like particles and typically are known to be thin of great widy, short length and consisting some what of ruptured fibres.
There are other types of lingo-cellulosic materials that are used in wood polymer composite materials that sometimes are lumped in with particle boards, but differ mainly in the amount of processing involved in preparing the woody material fore composite manufacture. Fibre board is a good example in that the degree of fibreization is much higher than the above materials through chemical and physical treatment.