A robot can do three boring sharpening jobs
Well-sharpened chains are the foundation of successful sawing, whether it’s with a full-size harvester or a handheld power saw.
But sharpening is a really boring job.
Pär Markusson has developed the latest medicine against boredom.
Pär and his company Markusson Development work with fully automatic machines that grind saw chains. At Elmia Wood in the beginning of June they presented the third development stage, a machine that automatically performs all three work stages: sharpening the saw teeth, the gullets, and the depth gauge portions of the cutting links.
Previous models from Markusson and other manufacturers have automatically sharpened the teeth and the depth gauge portions of the cutting links, but the gullets had to be sharpened by hand. That sharpening stage often never happened, and the result was a poorly functioning chain. The end result was that chains were often replaced long before they needed to be.
According to its designer, the new Markusson Triplematic grinding machine sharpens gullets better than most people can do by hand. Poorly sharpened gullets can cause a chain to break.
“The first users of the machine report that their chains are lasting longer,” Pär says.
At Elmia Wood he also presented a new grinding machine – though without the third sharpening stage – for the biggest chains with a ¾ inch dimension. These chains are used in some harvesting heads and other industrial sawing equipment.
In a professional context, hand-sharpening chains is not only boring, it wastes work time and money.