On Mon, 29 Jan 2018 18:35:03 +0000, newshound
wrote:

Any other views or advice? I realise that hiring a petrol shredder would
be cheaper, but I like collecting things.

I have a cheap genset, a Briggs&Stratton fourstroke bolted to a generator --
it's an asychronous one. That means that on overload it keep happily spinning,
but doesn't generate any electricity; generally used on cheap gennys.

The generator is rated at 2000 Watts. This is useless in answering the question
"will machine X run"...

I have a Bosch AXT Rapid 2000 shredder, which will happily spin up and run and
chop quite thick branches, and generally do what it is supposed to. Start genny,
plug in, turn on, just works. (This may a have a motor with brushes, going by
the spares diagrams.) It'll stall on branches that are about what the manual
says are the maximum for the shredder. Might be a bit more powerful running off
mains, but this is a matter of degree.

I have a 1500 Watt scarifier. Motor, capacitor (so a cage motor), and a switch,
motor driving a shaft with blades on it via a belt. This will not run, at least
not without elaborate rigmaroles: Running just the motor with the drive belt
removed, and spinning it up to speed with a cordless drill didn't work. I did
eventually get it to run by placing a small resistance in series with the motor.
This would let the motor start to spin, and accelerate very slowly without
choking out the genny. Bridging the resistor would then allow operation of
sorts.

The resistance I used was a parallel circuit of a clothes iron, a hairdryer, and
a 1000 watt halogen bulb. The motor would then very slowly begin to spin, and
reach operating speed within about 20-30 seconds. Then a second person would
close a switch shorting out the series resistor. I'd drop the scarifier blades
in the grass, and the motor would stall easily, causing a repeat performance.
The scarifier Just Works off a 16 amp main, and doesn't stall, either. It's
pretty much useless on the genny, and I only go through the rigmarole with hair
dryer etc. because it's still less trouble than scarifiying by hand.

Otherwise, I'm happy with the genny: it's noisy, yes, but it was cheap. But my
use is infrequent, and small tools like a 115mm angle grinder are no problem at
all.

The only way to find out if the Lidl inverter will work is to try!


Thomas Prufer