With wood being one of the few renewable resources, its use continues to grow. But the automation of processing the raw material comes with its own challenges. By their very nature, wooden logs are inconsistent in size and density. Although converting tolerances are much larger than metal or plastic components, it's this variation that presents problems in high-speed automated processing. A customer of ours presented us with a problem they were having with their automated de-barking machine. The basic design included a large number of rollers and cutters that sheared the bark off raw logs. [...]

Installing some type of torque limiting device in your machine system is very often a wise idea. This is especially true where there is human interaction, but it’s also smart to include them in other types of processing equipment. A common objection to designing them into standard machine designs is that they sometimes cost more than the components they are thought to protect. But that’s really a secondary consideration. The prime reason to add them to machine designs is to eliminate the downtime associated with removing damaged components, finding replacements, and installing new ones. This [...]