| Summary: | On Nordic clearcuts, todayâs tree planting machines produce high-quality but costly regenerations. Much of this high cost is attributable to the planting machinesâ low productivity. One promising way of raising productivity is to lessen the time spent manually reloading seedlings onto the carousels of crane-mounted planting devices. Using MagMat, a carousel test-rig designed by engineering students, we studied how much faster tray-wise seedling reloading is on the Bracke Planter compared to reloading with todayâs seedling-wise-loaded carousel. The MagMat test-rig held eight Hiko cultivation trays from which seedlings were deplugged individually and dropped into the planting tube. The time study confirmed that seedling reloading was on average twice as fast with MagMat compared to todayâs seedling carousel, thereby increasing assumed planting machine productivity by 8â9% depending on the planting device used. MagMatâs cost-efficiency was analysed to be particularly reliant on its added investment cost, mechanical availability and how quickly trays can be switched automatically. Nevertheless, MagMatâs field performance illustrated the overall potential of tray-wise loading compared to piecewise seedling loading for increasing the productivity of crane-mounted planting devices. Also, deplugging proved to be a reliable method of extracting seedlings from the rigid, copper-painted Hiko cultivation trays even when performed at the excavatorâs boom-tip during mounding work. We conclude that, rather than piecewise seedling loading, tray-wise loading combined with deplugging seedlings from suitable cultivation trays is a reliable and much more time-efficient method to feed seedlings on probably any type of tree planting machine.
|
|---|
