Pride of place on Wood-Mizer’s stand was taken by the WM1000, its largest band sawmill to date.
The new machine is designed to cut heavy logs up to 1.7m in diameter. That makes its prime markets the hardwood sawmillers of Africa and Asia, says Wood-Mizer, although it believes it could also appeal to temperate hardwood and softwood processors. In fact, the logs it was cutting at the show were poplar, due to availability.
Essentially a static machine, the WM1000 can be readily transported from location to location if required.
“It runs on I-beam tracks which either we can provide, or the customer can source themselves to their requirement,” said a Wood-Mizer spokesperson.
The WM1000 uses 50-75mm bandsaw blades but, in line with Wood-Mizer’s tradition, they are also thin kerf to cut waste and boost overall yield.
In addition to its controls for vertical, forward and backward movement of the head, the WM1000 features Wood-Mizer’s Setworks system, which allows operators to preset board thickness, then automatically moves it to the correct position for each pass.
The company also gave its Ligna debut to its ‘spiky’ chain system which gives added control to material feed, minimising slippage and enabling even short, twisted logs to be fed in butt-to-butt.
