Ponsse H7 harvesting head: quick, safe, controlled tree felling (Credit: Ponsse)
Tree-choppin’ was once a man’s man’s online game, an art so challenging that they nevertheless hold wood chopping competitions even today. But regardless of how buff and bearded the chopper, there’s no possibility of out-logging one of these simple things. The modern lumberjack is a rugged all-terrain car with a tree harvesting head that hugs a tree trunk like a koala, then executes it with severe bias, pieces off bark and branches, and areas it into logs of a pre-determined length in a matter of seconds. it is mesmerizing to look at, and variety of terrifying, even if you’re not a tree.
Ponsse’s Ergo 8w is an 8-wheeled harbinger of lumber doom. Driven by a 6-cylinder Mercedes engine making 286 horse power and 1, 150 newton-metres of torque, it generates its method over difficult and slanted terrain on 26.5-inch tires and carries a crane to 36 legs long.
After a crane, there’s an amazing harvester head that holds a tree trunk very securely with clamps and rollers. it is got an inbuilt 60-horsepower chainsaw on a hydraulic supply, capable of felling trees around 25.6 ins in diameter. As soon as it is got a grip, it slices through trunk area enjoy it’s butter.
Having sawed through trunk, the harvester controls the fall of the tree while keeping its hold. It utilizes feed rollers to attract the trunk area through and saw it into lengths that can be pre-determined from cabin. Whilst gets pulled through, around six de-limbing knives strip the trunk bare.
The absolute rate for this operation is shocking to watch – particularly if you’ve previously done this type of work manually. Fifty-foot woods can become piles of nicely cut logs in 20 moments. The harvesters are relentless and mesmerizing to view, specially the means the harvesting head hugs the tree like a friendly teddy-bear before murdering and dismembering it.
an in-built computer software collection logs the … really, logs while they’re cut, interacting without any cables with the company to make sure the operator gets the desired quantities of wood within correct lengths, and fleet administration tasks tend to be managed through a smartphone/tablet application. Operating a harvester seems like fairly skilled work, therefore Ponsse in addition makes simulators for education.
Harvesters such as these make signing vastly quicker, more effective and less dangerous than it once was. Although it’s painful to look at so how quickly they may be able denude a gorgeous forest landscape, it’s really worth remembering exactly how much we however rely on wood as a building material, hence logging can be carried out sustainably.