Monday, January 26, 2009

Impressive and Frightening

This is one of the most impressive (and frightening on several levels) pieces of engineering I've ever seen. When there exists a device that can turn a living tree into logs in under 15 seconds, it is no surprise that deforestation can be a problem. Fortunately, this appears to be a tree farm... for IKEA?

The unbridled and unapologetic efficiency by which this machine performs its function leaves a visceral sensation of both awe and horror. It is distrubingly animal-like. The fact the tree is mostly debarked by the time it hits the ground makes my jaw drop.

43 comments:

  1. Wow, that machine is crazy. Its rather interesting to hear right wing logging folks yell at the left about cutting logging acreage, in effect cutting logging jobs, when each one of these machines probably caused the loss of several dozen logging jobs.

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  2. Notice the trees are in lines... Plant, wait X years, fell. Repeat.

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  3. That is frighteningly efficient. Also, strangely fluid motion, I would have expected something like that to be more cumbersome.

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  4. I wonder if machines like this are being used in actual forests, rather than "man-made" ones such as the one in the video. If so, that would be much more frightening to me. It looks to me as if these trees are made (genetic modification?) to be felled with a machine like this.

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  5. That's awesome, but in the traditional sense. I wouldn't like to get my arm trapped in that beast.

    Slight typo in the title btw ;)

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  6. > "Remember guys that these are special IKEA trees unable to live in the wild."
    >
    > :-)

    That's right! And, funny thing... that machine-- is built by the Swedes.
    I first saw it on a Discovery Channel or Sci Channel program.

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  7. anyway, it's Finnish:
    http://www.afm-forest.fi/

    and yes, it's a tree farm.

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  8. The trees look like eucaliptus. They grow fast and they all are alike -tall and without branches- and about the same size. It wouldn't be feasible to use this kind of machine in a real forest.

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  9. They absolutely are used in flat ground and with small trees. If you liked that, here is an example of a timberfaller with a smaller footprint (less soil compaction) and able to maintain it's center of gravity in steeper inclines:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CD2V8GFqk_Y

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  10. Seems like those are not anymore "living" trees. Their bark from the lower part of the trunk is carved off about few months before harvest so they die before harvest and thats why they debark so easily.

    That kind of harvesters are in daily use in natural finnish forests. The machine actually does quite a many functions during that 15 secs. After cutting the tree down as it goes thru the trunk it measures it and calculates the dimensions of the tree and determines what kind of logs it can cut from it ;).

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  11. Imagine what it could do to humans.
    I mean if you some how mistook a person for a tree and picked the up.
    there wouldn't be much of a person left.
    o_o

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  12. I spoke to my Dad and describe it to him, and he said "Yeh, when we lived in Sfrica i used to sell those" and we lived there about 12 years ago so it's not new technology.

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  13. Reminds me of this plustech Oy development for Timberjack: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3215894721397995325&hl=en

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  14. Man, that thing is straight out of Ferngully...

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  15. Very Dr. Suess's "The Lorax" like

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  16. Many years ago I had a summer job in Finland working on the national forst inventory. They did this survey every ten years to make sure they were not harvesting more wood than was grown each year. They take this very seriously there, since wood products are a major part of their economy.

    It is also very flat in Finland which makes these tracked machine very effienct and less of a soil errosion problem. Looks like it also leaves a lot of biomass in the forest since the debarking is done on site and onluy the wood log removed.

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  17. You guys are a trip. I could just hear you complain if you were told there is not going to be anymore toilet paper, books and everything in the future will be build with metal, stone, etc. that has to be mined, maybe smelted (with coal as the basic fuel)and other not so "green" methods. When you have the answer to the problem -- then provide the answer and stop foolishly complaining. Forest are renewable resources.

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  18. hello johnny,

    This is annreddy i had gone through ur wii projects its superb and perfect job. I was very much impressed by your project works and decided to do an project in my masters by using wii remote. I dont know whether i can mail u like this or not but i need some help from you. hope u help me for my project. my project is too design an enhanced gloves worn by the cyclist which can flash a light when cyclist signaled to turn.In the first instant the PC should detect the signalling pattern of the cyclist by the movement of the cyclist arm and generate a light pattern of respective signal. here we will be using wiimote as an indicator and PC as a consol.

    so i am having a doubt that do we need to use any other extra sensor bars for the communication between the pc and wiimote via bluetooth. just by using a wiimote, PC and a bluetooth dongle can we make this happen. please do help me. I will be waiting for your reply.

    thank you very much

    ANNREDDY

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  19. The one you posted has been removed to terms of violation. Here is a working link to the same video

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pdXo-jU-IBI

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  20. If so, that would be much more frightening to me. It looks to me as if these trees are made (genetic modification?) to be felled with a machine like this.
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  21. That's great, but in the conventional sense. I wouldn't like to have my arm bound in that beast.

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  22. wait X years, fell. Repeat.Notice the trees are in lines... Plant.

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