A Terex Ecotec Phoenix 3300 trommel is playing a key role sorting bulk sawmill waste in the western Highlands.
Boyd Brothers, based at Corpach near Fort William, is a haulage and material handling specialist which undertakes logistics services on several ports around Scotland.
One of the firm’s clients for material handling solutions is BSW Timber, which operates eleven manufacturing sites across the UK and Latvia, including a sawmill at Corpach. The business is a large-scale producer of timber products for applications ranging from fencing and landscaping through to cladding, construction, and pallet production.
BSW’s Corpach site receives around 450,000m3 of material annually, producing over 250,000m3 of finished products. The remaining 200,000m3 is also put to good use.
The sawmill residue is collected throughout the mill on a series of conveyors before being discharged at the adjoining Boyd Brothers site. The residue comes in a range of sizes from dust to 60mm chips and until recently, the material was handled by a pair of Doppstadt 620 screens.
With the company sending out much of the screened material on vessels from the adjacent dock, the Boyd Brothers team decided to invest in a trommel capable of handling a larger volume, allowing stockpiles to be built up of various grades of chip and dust prior to the arrival of the vessels. Having a stockpile would allow the vessels, each with a capacity of around 6,000 tonnes, to be loaded more effectively and more often.
With a requirement to handle up to 120t per hour, the market for high output trommels is described as ‘limited’. One company with such a trommel in its portfolio is Molson Green, part of Molson Equipment Group.
Boyd Brothers contacted Molson and during initial conversations with David Sutherland and Mike Mackenzie, it was decided that a new Terex Ecotec Phoenix 3300 trommel would provide a solution.
The model is the largest trommel within the Ecotec range and boasts an operating weight of just over 37.5 tonnes. Sitting on a three-axle chassis, it is delivered using a fifth wheel mounting to connect it to a suitable tractor unit. With a travel length of just over 21m, the 3300’s delivery through the tight and winding Scottish roads took some planning by the Molson team to ensure it arrived without a scratch and caused as little delay to local traffic as possible.
The 3300 is available with either a heavy-duty tipping grid or double deck vibrating grid to feed material into the drum. It is available with a range of screening media to produce any given products. Boyd Brothers chose six different sections of woven mesh ranging from 13mm to 20mm to give two consistent products suitable for a variety of construction product manufacture and horticultural uses. Depending on the media used, the trommel can be reconfigured to work with heavy construction and demolition waste or in the production of high-quality composts.
The design of the trommel uses a 7.8m3 hopper to receive the material. Mounted at one end of the heavy-duty chassis, the hopper gradually feeds the material into the 2.32m diameter drum via a variable speed belt feeder. The material is sent into the 9.32m-long drum which has been fitted with a variety of woven mesh which segregates the material into two grades.
The drum is driven by a four-wheel drive system with friction grip wheels and allows operators to run it in either direction. Molson explained that to ensure no chips stick and block the mesh, a series of nylon brushes stretch the length of the drum, ensuring the mesh is always clean. The large chips pass out of the drum onto a 1200mm-wide outfeed conveyor.
The trommel is powered by a Caterpillar Stage V diesel engine.
Boyd Brothers has employed two wheeled loaders to handle the input and output of products. The smaller machine with a 6m3 bucket spends most of its time loading the Phoenix whilst a larger machine with 8m3 bucket handles the screened material and also the loading of the firm’s high-capacity ejector trailer, which ferries the material from the production area to the quayside.
“We have been very pleased with the performance of the Phoenix since it arrived,’ BSW Group’s Gary Isherwood said. “We have reduced our cost per cube to screen the material whilst massively increasing the output with a better product. Molson have been a great company to deal with delivering the product quickly and efficiently and giving us the ability to exceed both our and our customers’ expectations.”
