NEW SAWMILL EQUIPMENT

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 32017, 18 June 1969, Page 10

NEW SAWMILL EQUIPMENT

This circular grading table in use at a new timber mill at Southbrook is the first piece of equipment of its kind in a New Zealand sawmill. The machine is 60ft in diameter, and revolves once in seven minutes, considerably reducing labour and space compared with conventional grading and sorting tables.

The mill, which has been In use for a few weeks, is owned by Ashley Sawmilling Company, Ltd, a wholly owned subsidiary of McAlpines (Rangiora), Ltd. The revolving table has been adapted from a design which originated in Australia. The managing director of McAlpines, Ltd (Mr D. D. McAlpine), saw it in use while on an export promotion trip. Mr McAlpine predicts that other sawmills in this country will soon adopt the idea. The table allows a much mproved economy of effort — wo men can easily cope with he present output of about 14,000 superfeet of timber a

day. On a traditional sorting table, the milled timber comes off in a long straight conveyer bench. This new design enables up to 60 packets of timber to be stacked round the table. The timber is stacked on wooden rollers on a floor outside the table, sloping away. When the packet is full, chocks are removing- from the rollers, allowing the packet to move back, providing easy access for a fork lift. The new mill at Todds Road, Southbrook; replaced an old mill at Ashley, and was built in six months—“something of a record,” said Mr McAlpine. Progress on the mill was seriously held up when the roof was blown off by a north-westerly gale at a critical stage of construction when it was not fully braced, causing $4OOO damage.

The new plant already has an output of 14,000 ft a day, or over 3 million feet a year, compared with the output at Ashley of 2 million feet a year. With the same staff, the mill will have an output of about 5 million feet a year when the second stage of development is finished in about a year, when a second major sawbench will be added.

The average output of the 40 Sawmills in Canterbury was about 5000 ft a day, or about 1 million feet a year, said Mr McAlpine. The mill is all-electric powered, and follows modern trends in having fully automatic bandsaws, which from the first cut have an accuracy to within l/64in. A bandsaw has less waste, with a cut of l/Bin wide, compared with a conventional circular saw cut of up to 3/Bin, said Mr McAlpine. An innovation is that sawdust is blown away by forced air from the saws, in contrast to the normal process of removing it by a conveyor belt. This is possible because no water is used to cool the saws. Water coagulates the sawdust, and makes removal by air difficult. Instead the saws are cooled by pads drip fed with diesel fuel.

Machinery in the mill was designed by Southern Cross Engineering, Ltd, Mr M. Taylor was the project engineer. The company mills six types of exotic timbers, all cut from the Hanmer State Forest: Corsican, Radiata, Ponderosa and Austrian pines. New Zealand Oregon (Douglas fir) and Larch. Mr McAlpine said the new

mill was not established at Hanmer because of difficulties of employment and the severe frost conditions there, which could affect production. At present, timber for the Southbrook mill is carted by road to Culverden, railed to Rangiora, and thence by road to the mill, about two miles away.

At Southbrook, the firm has a triangular-shaped block of land of 17 acres, bounded by Todds Road and Ellis Road. This is fully accommodated with the new mill and tanallslng plants. The company also owns an 18 acre block, running back from the Main Road through Southbrook and bounded by Ellis Road. It is proposed to use this land to move most of the dressing machinery and retail shop and administration block from the present site in the Rangiora township.