Silver manus® 2021 - 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.

Description of application

Industry: Forestry
Customer requirement: Long service life despite dirt and high radial forces
Solution from igus: drylin W linear guide, iglidur G plain bearing

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

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The most adverse conditions for the linear guide

The linear guide and bearings can withstand extreme environmental conditions. "Soil, sand, sawdust, moisture and resin were not allowed to cause the bearing to fail or seize in our application.

With the igus polymer products, we found exactly what we were looking for. Metal bearings with lubricant would have blocked the bearing in combination with dirt," continues Stefan Reichenbach. - "We completely dispense with lubricants in our bearings, which makes our solutions lightweight, robust and lubricant- 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 is that the absence of external lubricants means that no oil gets into the forest floor. The bearings are cost-effective and yet can absorb and transmit high radial forces and torques with a very long service life.