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----- Original Message -----
From:
Newsgroups: rec.crafts.metalworking
Sent: Friday, June 03, 2011 7:40 PM
Subject: Chipper Shredder plans


On Jun 3, 9:43 pm, "PrecisionmachinisT"
wrote:

Woody material ( which is typically what people use chippers for ) isn't
going to improve the soil much by itself, you need to also add copious
amounts of green stuff, and it's better to compost it all in a pile first
rather than to simply till under.

The soil here is mostly clay. In the area I cleared for a veggie
garden, I trucked in about 4 pickup loads of ground woody material
from the county yard waste yard and then added about five pickup loads
of horse manure last fall. It still has too much clay, but is a lot
better than it was.

Without the horse manure it would have been a different story.



As far as home-owner grade...definately pass on anything that uses a
verticle shaft lawnmower type motor or you'll be sorry...

Those are pretty much useless.


A consumer fraud, but I digress.

Fairly often, in fact.


As a point of refrence, mine is a "bearcat"....it's pto drive that
attaches
to the 3point hitch on my tractor which has 23hp @ at 540...it is not a
"planer blade" type, rather, it has a disc that's about the size of a
33-1/3
rpm lp record and 3/8 in thick with a single tooth mounted to it....

RPM is increased via Vee belt appears to be 1 to 3 ratio so the main
chipper
disc I would estimate runs ~2500 rpm, it is about 12 in diameter and has
a
single tooth about 4in long located at about 10 inches along the
diameter,
and is guaged to cut at a chipload of about .125 per revolution IIRC so
guessing it's probably processing at ~ 6000 or so sfm.

Does the tooth chip the branch and the chip goes through the disk? I

Yes, that's pretty much how it works--I can't remember exactly how the chip
thickness is controlled but I'll try and take a look tomorrow, maybe take a
photo since just recently I got a new phone that actually lets me download
to my computer...

had one more or less like that but then moved across country. As i
remember it had multiple teeth, I think it was two teeth. One tooth
might be better as far as bogging down the engine.

It may have more teeth, like I say, it's been a while...

If your not interested in the hammermill aspect, and are just wanting a
disc type chipper then it's certainly do-able project though pretty sure
OSHA might not like having your hired hands using it...



After that, the chips fall into what is basically a hammer mill, 4 rows
of
with 6 flails each on a drum.... there is also a top hopper that you can
use
to shove small dry sticks and green shubs and that kind of ****
into...goes
directly to the hammermill...there is a screen under the hammermill that
the
finished product falls out of....it's made from 1/4in steel and has ~1in
diameter holes drilled in a 1-1/2in grid pattern.

I might be able to get some pictures if your interested in the actual
design
details but....

--my main point is that it's still not quite as powerfull as I would
like--IIRC it will run 3in diameter green woody branches at a rate of
about
5 ft/ min on a good day but at that size material frequently have to stop
feeding in order to keep the engine from bogging down and possibly
stalling.....

Most all the stuff I want to chip is smaller. More like an inch in
diameter.
I could live with a chipper that did not do 3 inch diameter limbs.
Those
I could haul to the county yard waste area.

Or use as fire wood...


FWIW, I have a fairly large burn pile I'm going to torch probably
tomorrow
and pretty sure I haven't used the chipper in at least 5 years.


Can not burn where I am. At least not legally.


It's almost all but joke here where I'm at--download a "permit", print and
sign it, keep it on the premesis...make sure and abide by the outdoor
burning rules:

http://www.swcleanair.org/pdf/CowlitzBurnPermit.pdf

--although next county over, it's a completely different story.