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> Ultimately, InventWood is planning to use wood chips to create structural beams of any dimension that won’t need finishing. “Imagine your I-beams look like th
by gwbas1c 1y ago
> Ultimately, InventWood is planning to use wood chips to create structural beams of any dimension that won’t need finishing. “Imagine your I-beams look like this,” Lau said, holding up a sample of Superwood. “They’re beautiful, like walnut, ipe. These are the natural colors. We haven’t stained any of this.”
Show the [beep]ing picture!
- downboots 1y ago"The company treats it with 'food industry' chemicals"
- rented_mule 1y agoThe picture at the top of the article appears representative of the surface appearance: https://www.inventwood.com/superwood-beams https://www.inventwood.com/superwood-beams
- bjt 1y agoI know it's practically cliche to say so these days, but that picture is giving strong AI vibes. Look at the joints between the big beams. If you needed beams that large to hold up a building, you wouldn't cut them in the middle like that. And you wouldn't have those gaps. Plus, all the text on the page is future tense, talking about what the super wood beams will be able to do. So I don't know how much that picture really represents what the wood will look like.
- MichaelDickens 1y agoI'm almost positive it's AI generated. Look at the chairs at the kitchen island in the background. No human would draw chairs that look like that. The picture at https://www.inventwood.com/superwood-facade https://www.inventwood.com/superwood-facade also looks AI-generated. The fact that they're using AI images on their landing pages does not give me confidence in the quality of the product.
- SubiculumCode 1y agoWhat about this one? https://www.inventwood.com/superwood-beams https://www.inventwood.com/superwood-beams There are lots of posts from them on the internet image search...and it seems they've gone to a number of industry conferences with samples. I agree, that from a PR perspective, their pictures are too polished. They should show a piece in a less polished format.
- noitpmeder 1y agoAt this point I'd say I have <5% confidence any image on their site is of an actual sample as opposed to a 3d render, or worse, AI slop. Edit: Even the photos of wood on a truck is obviously AI garbage when you zoom in: https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/67160715a896dc265c536669/5d19f6d0-ae17-4633-8280-11953bda4954/transportation.png https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/67160715a896dc...
- SubiculumCode 1y agowow that image is pretty bad; all sorts of weird inconsistencies in the wood stack that scream AI; I'm ignoring the license gibberish as that could be just removal of identifying info. What about this: https://www.newhometrendsinstitute.com/consumer-insights/industry-pulse-fascinating-finds-ibs-kbis-2024-expo-floor https://www.newhometrendsinstitute.com/consumer-insights/ind... the image is low resolution, but appears to be from an actual trade show, and an image not from the company.
- whyenot 1y agoWhat is going on with the window reflections (for superwood-facade)? It doesn't look right.
- willidiots 1y agoSome of them literally have "visualelectric" in the filename. (ex: https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/67160715a896dc265c536669/37ea9601-01e1-4fed-9ffa-62709f4441d0/visualelectric-1740944772546.png https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/67160715a896dc...)
- bee_rider 1y agoThere’s also an image a bit down the page: https://www.inventwood.com/technology https://www.inventwood.com/technology But I’m not sure if it a real photo or some sort of… analogy? Under “INTRODUCING SUPERWOOD: THE NEXT GENERATION OF BUILDING MATERIALS,” we can see one piece that looks like an actual piece of wood, and then some other ones that looks like an artificial wood-looking finish wrapped around some core which visually looks metallic (but which, I assume, is actually their engineered wood). I dunno. I guess “being wood” is more about the ecological impact in this case. If it is replacing steel and it looks ugly, well, a lot of steel looks ugly and then gets covered up.
- csallen 1y agoOh it's 100% AI generated. Look at the back brown leather chair to the right. It's supposed to have a blanket on it, but instead it's a garbled mess
- leptons 1y agoYeah, inspecting the picture closely there are at least 20 to 30 things that immediately stand out as "AI did this". There are so many things wrong with those chairs on the right. The wood support beams are just not right, nobody would build like this.
- Saris 1y agoThat really looks like it's AI generated. Not a good look for a company claiming to make something!
- bufferoverflow 1y agoThat's an AI generated image They didn't even bother to AI-upscale it to get rid of the artifacts
- noitpmeder 1y agoThis is so spot on. The fact that there isn't a single image showing an ACTUAL comparison, even of small samples, is a massive red flag for a company that is advocating the "aesthetic" properties of it's product. Then, even worse, they RELY ENTIRELY ON UNLABELED AI GENERATED IMAGES. I cannot imagine a better way to say "there's a high chance everything we've promised is fake news". Just make sure to squint before looking at our ad copy!
- echelon 1y agoThis video is what you're looking for: https://youtu.be/96Dz-rQtGxI https://youtu.be/96Dz-rQtGxI Here's someone from the InventWood team talking about the product, uses, future, and more at a trade show. They show a hands-on demo of the wood product and give an animation of the process. The talk is pretty illuminating. They think this will even be used in the automotive sector in places where carbon fiber is currently utilized. This is way better than the press coverage and actual website.
- noitpmeder 1y agoThanks for the link! As pessimistic as I am toward this company it sounds like something that could be quite neat if it actually exists. However, I lost all hope (of the little I had) after their sales rep said they "densify" their wood. My dude, if you need to spin so hard you pull out a thesaurus for "compress" it's not a great look.
- SR2Z 1y agoBecause they don't just compress their wood! That's the step after putting it in a vacuum and baking it and heating it up so that the lignin depolymerizes. The video does a great job of explaining how this is different from just sticking wood into a press.
- shkkmo 1y ago> However, I lost all hope (of the little I had) after their sales rep said they "densify" their wood. You lost hope because they used an industry standard term?
- gsaussy 1y agoYes the final product will preserve the wood grain in some form. The paper has a few images of the final product. They basically boil out all the non-cellulose and compress what remains into a smaller form. I assume the strength is that a super board of the same size would be made of several boards' worth of wood fibers. I haven't read enough yet, but I wonder if this substantially lowers weight / strength. Right now, steel is required for tall buildings because there is an upper limit to how high you can go before wood buckles. There are no 300 m trees after all. fwiw, I first thought this was going to be some innovation in glue, which allows manufacturers to turn wood chips and sawdust into MDF, OSB, and particle board. These are typically weaker than sawyered beams of the same size because the glue is not as strong as the cellulose fibers that run the length of a beam. (However, they are getting applied more and more in the construction in the US because it is crazy expensive to find a tree that can produce thick enough 40 ft beams, but you can easily get enough sawdust to make an even thicker, precut MDF board.) But I thought no shot, because if you can make glue that is stronger than cellulose, then why bother with the wood?
- some_random 1y agoSomeone posted what's probably the study it's based on below, it looks to be Figure 2d and 10e. As suggested, it's just darkened in a nice looking way (without stain) which frankly doesn't seem like it's necessarily a good thing. https://www.fpl.fs.usda.gov/documnts/pdf2018/fpl_2018_song001.pdf https://www.fpl.fs.usda.gov/documnts/pdf2018/fpl_2018_song00...
- m463 1y agowasn't this a picture: https://techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/SUPERWOOD-plank.jpeg https://techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/SUPERWOOD-...