Bonfiglioli industrial motors and drives recently combined with New Zealand sawmiller, Red Stag Timber, to keep its old mill operating while a new $NZ120 million supermill is built. Source: Timberbiz
Bonfiglioli designed and assembled a compact and powerful custom engineered HDP 150 drive specified by Red Stag in consultation with Bonfiglioli New Zealand sales manager Paul Savage.
The engineering team at the Red Stag near Rotorua slotted this new generation HDP design into its log carriage drive space occupied by the old carriage drive, which was losing efficiency and reliability.
“It is a critical drive,” said Mr Savage. “Without it the mill comes to a complete stop and the cost of downtime is substantial.
“This particular mill is New Zealand’s largest sawmill, with a lot of customers depending on it for high-quality timber products for the residential construction markets in New Zealand, Australia and the Pacific Islands,” he said.
“Delivery was critical as the window given to complete the installation was tight. With downtime out of the question, airfreight was a must,” Mr Savage said.
“Bonfiglioli’s Design Service Centre (DSC) in Sydney worked rapidly to complete the special extended shaft design and drawings for the custom build.
“The unit was assembled and shipped on time, meeting the extremely tight and critical delivery schedule.”
Consisting of two sawmill lines, with associated timber processing operations for kiln drying, planning, treating and remanufacturing, Red Stag Timber currently produces over 450,000m³ of Radiata Pine and Douglas-fir lumber per annum and employs more than 300 people.
The drive installed at Red Stag was manufactured with a special extended output shaft of 926mm to accommodate the large winch drum. Large spherical rollers were also installed that were designed to withstand the high radial and shock loadings exerted by the mechanism.
“Everything has gone to plan and Red Stag is impressed with the unit that has been running perfectly since installation,” said Mr Savage.
