Silver manus® 2021 - felling wedge

Description of application

Industry: forestry
customer requirement: long service life despite dirt and high radial forces
igus solution: iglidur G plain bearings, drylin W linear guide

Forstreich GmbH receives the silver manus for the use of iglidur plain bearings and drylin linear guides in a felling wedge.

The last few dry years have made it increasingly dangerous to fell trees with a hammer and wedge. Dead branches fall at the slightest impact. Forstreich, a company based in Freiburg, Germany, has therefore developed a radio-controlled, battery-driven felling wedge.

The forester places the wedge in the saw cut and starts the felling process, keeping a distance of at least ten metres. The design engineers use drylin W double rails and pillow blocks for the felling wedge's linear movements. They also use iglidur G plain bearings. The components allow the wedge to absorb radial forces over a long service life – even in environments with dirt, sand and wood chips.

Adverse conditions for the linear guide

The linear guide and the bearings withstand extreme ambient conditions. "Soil, sand, sawdust, moisture and resin were not allowed to cause bearing failure or seizure in our application.

With the igus polymer products, we found the ideal thing. In combination with dirt, metal bearings with lubricant would have blocked the bearing", Stefan Reichenbach continues. – "We do not use any lubricants in our bearings, which makes our solutions lightweight, robust, lubrication and maintenance-free. The same applies to our rails made of hardened and anodised aluminium", explains Philipp Köbele, Technical Sales Consultant at igus GmbH.Another important point: by not using external lubricants, no oil gets into the forest soil. Despite their low price, the bearings can support and transmit high radial forces and torques, and have a very long service life.