Stem Master
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Continuously-Collecting Energy Wood & Fuel Treatment Felling Head

TuLaCo Oy Ltd

Master of Global Forest Machinery

Co-Funded by the European Union

StemMaster continuously-collecting felling head — close-up photograph of the machine assembly

Research and Development Journey

We have been studying the fuel treatment topic for the last 4 years and as an outcome we have developed a felling head for fuel treatments that meet Canadian requirements.

StemMaster continuously-collecting felling head in winter operation — yellow disc blade + green frame + tire chains visible in the background

Continuously collecting felling head

  • A unique felling and continuous collection head.
  • Built for young forests with small-diameter trees and fuel management operations worldwide.
  • The main operation idea is to make selective pre-commercial thinning or first thinning to enable the remaining trees to grow faster and healthier.
  • Designed to produce non-limbed energy wood 2-3 times more efficiently than the existing solutions (single grip biomass grapples / heads).
  • Designed to be mounted on widely available base machines (10+ ton excavators and wheel harvesters).
  • Easy to use, requiring only a few days of training.

Suitability

Stemmaster is optimized for high-density forests where the felled trees are less than 4 inches (10 cm) in diameter but no larger than 6 inches (15 cm), depending on the size of the head.

  • The optimal tree size is 1–3 inches (2–8 cm).
  • The thicker the forest is, the better fit with Stemmaster.
  • To complete the job site, a small-medium size thinning forwarder will follow and pick up the bunches of stems (5–12 tons payload).
Side-by-side forest photograph — left: unthinned dense young growth marked Unthinned; right: thinned spacing with the forwarder operator visible in the background marked Thinned
Dense burnt-out forest of dead grey trees — fuel-laden landscape
Canada 1980-2021 forest fire perimeters map from Natural Resources Canada — Périmètres des feux

The Challenge

Wildfire prevention thinning is expensive, inefficient, and requires lots of resources.

Close-up of the StemMaster green-and-yellow continuously-collecting felling head with vertical disc blade and black collector barrels
Pile of harvested wood logs stacked horizontally — output of the continuously-collecting fuel treatment process

Proven Working Principle

Continuously-collecting fuel treatment felling head method is proven and can revolutionize how fuel treatments are done. It will reduce the cost of fuel treatments by 80%.

Mixed forest stand with a legacy yellow harvester visible at ground level — representing current fuel-treatment practice
K8 red single-grip industrial grapple — a feller-buncher style competitor head representative of current practice

Suitability

Current fuel treatment practices are inefficient, expensive, and often environmentally unfriendly. Feller-bunchers, single-grip guillotines, harvester heads, and manual felling are commonly used.

Construction of Stemmaster

StemMaster head cuts the tree with a hydraulically driven disc blade or robust chain saw and moves the trees continuously by elastic collectors to the intermediate wood storage.

Five rendered views of the StemMaster head — Right Side View, Side View, Left Side View, Bottom View, Bird View

Note: Can be optionally equipped with a guillotine cutting blade for bigger diameter single trees.

Features and Compatibility

The head requires much less power compared to felling heads, which enables the use of older machines that are widely available. The fuel economy of the head is great due to the pressure-compensated valve bench.

StemMaster collecting system close-up — yellow saw disc with green frame
The continuously stem collecting system with an integrated cutting blade is the key principle.
StemMaster mounted on a forwarder in a snowy young forest
Second hand small scale forest machine can be utilized as a StemMaster's base machines.
Close-up of the StemMaster green and yellow head assembly with hydraulic detail
StemMaster bioenergy heads have a simple robust design with a modern hydraulic system.

The thicker the forest, the better it is for Stemmaster. The head can handle all kinds of stands as long as the tree size is a good fit.

Forest tree close-up diagram 1
Forest stand close-up diagram 2
Young pine stand diagram 3
Forest stand close-up diagram 4

Suitability

StemMaster is available in two sizes. In optimal conditions, the top hourly output of the bigger model is 12 or 15 m3 depending on the size of StemMaster head.

StemMaster heads technical parameters and productivity — comparison table between 200-series TILT version and 300-series TILT version. Tree handling capacity 10–250 mm vs 10–350 mm; optimum diameter 30–120 mm vs 40–180 mm; weight 775 kg vs 1050 kg; hydraulic power need 55 kW vs 75 kW; typical output 6–12 m³/h vs 8–15 m³/h. Caption notes: the biggest factors of production are density of forest, tree sizes, and operator.

History

Continuously-collecting fuel treatment felling head method is proven and can revolutionize how fuel treatments are done. It will reduce the cost of fuel treatments by 80%.

StemMaster product history — LAKO 80 (1983), LAKO 45/60 (1988), LAKO 550 (2004), LAKO 52 (2013), LAKO 5-series (2015), StemMaster energy head (2025)

Contact Details

Feel free to reach out anytime to discuss about opportunities to collaborate.

Mr. Turkka Lastunen, CEO and Entrepreneur

Mr. Turkka Lastunen

CEO and Entrepreneur

E: turkka.lastunen@gmail.com

T: +358 44 513 3615

“TuLaCo Oy Ltd is developing an environmentally friendly, continuously collecting biomass and energy wood StemMaster harvester head product range, including the ability to do mechanized fuel management forest operations globally.

The product range head can be attached to a variety of brands, models, and sizes of base machines existing around the world. StemMaster can also be mounted with heads on used base machines, which means recycling the used machines.

The European Union is our co-founder and enables the professional execution of the project.”

STEMMASTER · THE MULTICATCH THINHEAD
tulaco.oy@gmail.com www.tulaco.fi www.stemmaster.ca

Headquarter

Lehtohaankuja 101, 20900
TURKU, Finland

Branch Office / Factory

Länsikatu 15 3F 211 / Pamilonkatu 25
80110 JOENSUU, Finland