Maintenance-free polymer bearings in mobile and stationary sawmills

Extreme heat in desert regions, severe frost in Siberia, high humidity in the rainforest: the weather must have no influence on the functionality of mobile and stationary sawmills. In addition, the handling of tree trunks involves an extremely high impact load as well as vast quantities of wood splinters, sawdust and dust during the actual work process. With hourly outputs of up to 10 m³, any size of timber can be cut safely, quickly and flexibly. "We supply high-quality machines and are always at the cutting edge of technical developments," says Manfred Rosam, head of the design office. "We offer our customers technically sophisticated solutions. For some years now, we have been increasingly using plastic plain bearings at various points in our sawmills. They prove themselves in the harshest working conditions, are lubrication-free and are also very easy to install," says Rosam, explaining some of the advantages.

Up to 40 tribologically optimised polymer bearings from bearing specialist igus® GmbH, Cologne, are used in particular in the successful "Montana" model, the mobile wide band sawmill for log diameters of up to 90 cm - and the trend is still rising. The professional sawmill was presented in the second half of 2006 and is now being used successfully all over the world. Here, for example, plain bearings made of the material iglidur® J prove their worth in the angle stops and the pre-cutter. drylin® linear plain bearings with iglidur® J sliding film show their strength in levelling. The flexible drylin® W guide system, also with sliding film, is used in the saw blade guide. The iglidur® J material is best suited for most applications in the linear area due to its wear and friction properties. This is why numerous igus® linear plain bearings are equipped with this material.