Developing and testing of a debarking tool mounted to brushcutter

Wood raw material harvesting is a field of occupation involving long processes and often requiring labor intensive works. In the cutting sub-process, especially the debarking of coniferous tree logs inside the harvesting blocks causes both the increasing of production time to be prolonged and the costs. Therefore, manual or motor-manual technology-based harvesting works are mainly performed by physical workforce. Consequently, there are negative effects on occupational health and safety of the workers. With the idea of facilitating debarking and increasing work comfort; in this study, a tool called motosoyar (moto-debarker) was developed by assembling the log debarking apparatus, which is already mounted on a chainsaw, to a motorized scythe (brushcutter). The aim of the study was to develop a more ergonomic peeling tool with the transfer of existing technology and to check whether it is feasible or not. In local industrial conditions, Orac BG520 brand and model motor scythe and Baseh brand debarking equipment was used to develop the motosoyar. It has been determined that the work efficiency of the debarking of the brutian pine and cedar logs with the motosoyar, which was produced with a total investment cost of 1600 TL, were 2.83 and m3/hour 2.61 m3/hour as respectively. It has been shown that this vehicle has advantages in terms of gas, dust, noise, body posture in favor of occupational health and safety, compared to the chainsaw-mounted debarking apparatus, but it requires improvement studies in terms of efficiency.