At last year’s FinnMetko show in Finland, ProSilva presented one of the most interesting news at the show – the J14 forwarder. Then, the machine was shown static as a concept machine, nicely parked on a pile of gravel. Now, it moves … 
ProSilva J14
New machines are always exciting, and this one is interesting as it contains solutions that have never broken through on forest machines. When I visited the FinnMetko I asked the CEO of ProSilva, Norbert Schalkx (who was the Sales Director at the time) about when the J14 should be out on the market. The plan was “during the coming winter”, which means last winter.
I fully understand that making new concepts work takes more time than planned. There are probably hundreds of examples of that out there, of which most never became a commercial machine.
Film clip – the machine is running
My Skogsforum colleague Torbjörn was over to Finland recently and got an exclusive demonstration of the J14 that he filmed.
The film shows the pendulum arms acting on side slopes. The J14 is still a concept machine and right now ProSilva is working on tuning the control system to optimize the functions of the pendulum arms and wheel motors. A goal is a machine that is always level and that each wheel always has the right speed to minimize soil damage.
We will have reason to get back to this machine. Here you can read the article from the FinnMetko show about the J14.
And here is the film clip:
