ORIGINAL: ScottVan
ORIGINAL: GerKonig
ORIGINAL: eddieC
eddieC.....what is the name of your company? Do you carry all sizes of wood?
Sorry, it was a joke.
As for balsa demand for wind turbines (windmills are different), fortunately balsa trees regenerate quickly, so balsa supplies for our hobby should improve with time.
that is true, nobody mentioned one of the actual biggest consumers. Boat and ship manufacturing use them too. I saw a blade being made here in PA. They are building them in Fairless Hills, in what was an abandoned steel mill. They have a ''layer'' of balsa, not on all the blade. Each blade costs over 1M. Really cool work. But the balsa grows fast, and it is grown and harvested like any other tree, just that they grow like crazy. Slow growing trees have dense and hard wood...
I buy Balsa USA kits, and generally I noticed no change in the quality of their wood. They do not laser cut, the die crunch.
Gerry
I can assure you that wind turbine blades are not creating a balsa supply issue at this time. A few years ago that was the case but as quoted above, balsa recovers quickly and supply > demand. As for cost, each blade (approx 40-45 meters) does not cost $1M, not even a half or third of that. As the blades get longer they use more exotic materials in the root to make it more rigid but use balsa in the same fashion, just more of it. Many blades are made in Brazil.
Cool work? Sure, but not easy. Fiberglass and epoxy...
The price was a comment from the Supervisor when I asked. I interpreted for them, they had welding problems, and brought the original crew from Spain. The company that manufactures the ones I saw are from Spain. The cost, as he mentioned is about 1M per blade, and 20M per unit. No idea if the 20M is installed. The diameter was 75meters, so each blade was less than half (for clearance).
They had a "white room" for working on the blades. I saw a cut of the design of the blade. Very complex. The metal for the base came flat from the Check Republic. Here they created rings, and did the soldering (using Canadian welding equipment). Thje problem is that they had too many issues with the welding, since they get X ray'd they had a lot ow fining work to do. I was only able to give (sell them) them one day of my time, but I took the job because I wanted to see the operation. Again, very cool work. The company name is Gamesa.
I saw a lot of these power generating units (like hundreds) in the south of Spain, across Africa. Were the Mediterranean meets the Atlantic, and they have 24/7 winds... I think it was called Tarifa... In France and the north of Spain I also saw a lot of them this summer. In my personal experience, if you see these things installed, it is not a good place for an RC club. Normally it is very, very windy...
Gerry