Automatic Sawmills

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31113, 16 July 1966, Page 13

Automatic Sawmills

(Specially written for "The Press" by DON GRADY) 'THE Southern Cross Engineering Company, Ltd., of Christchurch, soon hopes to turn the experience it has gained in £500,000 worth of automated sawmill construction projects to advantage in the export field.

The company specialises in automation in all types of industry, particularly in sawmilling. At present it is building timber-mill automatic installations in many parts of New Zealand. Five automated units have already been built Another five units are being designed or built on the West Coast. Others for elsewhere in the South Island are in the design stage and two units are under construction in the central North Island. One unit is under construction in Auckland, while another for North Auckland, is in the design stage. The key to the company’s success in the sales of these units is the New Zealanddesigned and made carriage setworks, which are simple, extremely efficient and cost about half the price of im-

ported units of similar capacity. It is these setworks, that the company’s sales manager (Mr M. C. Taylor) hopes to interest Australian millers in. The setworks is a method of cutting logs in a modern sawmill with bandmill cutting. The system will pre-set, on the carriage any dimension of timber from zero to 12 inches, or to use the technical term “infinite incremental setting.” Exporting to Australia would probably be confined to specialised items, but Southern Cross is looking into the designing, manufacturing and installation of automated timber mills in Fiji and other parts of the Pacific, and Malayasia and New Guinea. The setworks proposed for the Australian market, sell at about £B5O each.