28 Sep Tarkmet’s transfer carts can be found in almost every paper mill in the world
Tarkmet manufactures numerous special products you never even knew existed. One of them is the heavy-duty transfer cart, also known as a roll maintenance cart, which is most often used at paper mills. Paper machine rollers are huge, but they still need servicing. In preparation for servicing, the paper machine rollers are moved from one place to another using transfer carts.
Transfer carts are made to carry rollers weighing up to 120 tonnes. This means that you could stack 120 passenger cars or 10 trucks on top of each other, and the cart could carry their weight.
What exactly are transfer carts and how are they made?
Transfer carts run on rails
Because a transfer cart itself is very heavy and carries heavy products, it runs on rails inside the factory. Tarkmet’s Mechanical Engineer Keijo Olkinuora reveals that the design of transfer carts starts with the customer’s requirements and the space it will be used in.
“A transfer cart is designed according to the width of the rails, or in other words, the distance between the wheels. We also discuss whether it will need flanged or straight wheels, how many tonnes of weight it has to bear and whether it will be used for lifting things up and moving them down, which means it will need hydraulic components. These are the things we consider in our design and manufacture of transfer carts.”
Tarkmet’s transfer carts have a load-bearing capacity of 25 and 50 tonnes and they are either equipped with a manual pump or delivered without a lifting mechanism. Because they carry rollers up to 12 metres long and bear the weight of the pieces together, the carts run on the rails one after the other. They are generally pulled along using a crane.
Tarkmet also manufactures customised transfer carts for various purposes.
“We are currently preparing a delivery to Germany for a new paper mill that will be put into operation next year. They have ordered five transfer carts, two of which are fixed and three hydraulic,” Olkinuora says.
Tarkmet is one of the largest manufacturers of transfer carts in the world
Tarkmet has manufactured transfer carts for paper mills around the world: Dubai, America, Indonesia, China and anywhere where paper is made. According to Ari Kärjenmäki, Tarkmet’s CEO, these carts can also be used for other applications besides paper making. They are a great help anywhere where heavy items have to be moved from one place to another.
Kärjenmäki and Olkinuora explain that Tarkmet’s product is unique in that they have not come across another company anywhere that manufactures such devices.
“As far as we know, we are the largest manufacturer of transfer carts in the world,” Kärjenmäki says.
Tarkmet’s transfer carts go back a long way. The company started developing them as early as the 1970s together with two UPM paper mills located in Jämsänkoski, Finland. This means that the products were designed for this specific purpose right from the start.
“Over the years, Tarkmet’s transfer carts have proven extremely reliable. Our expertly compiled designs and calculations of load-bearing capacity ensure that they are perfectly suited for the customer’s needs. That’s why our transfer carts will withstand decades of heavy use,” Olkinuora says.