Full beam vs half beam splitters

I have never found slickening up the splitter slides on a hydraulic woodsplitter to be all that important; it helps, but the hydraulic cylinder easily overcomes the friction losses. That is not the case on a kinetic energy woodsplitter though. On those, every hour or so they have to be lubricated so that they function fairly well. Not so much on the driving part, but by the spring returning it.

I am working on a design now that will make for a heavy tonnage, but have an incredibly fast cycle rate, for a woodsplitter, but need to enclose it to keep the parts in alignment, so I appreciate all the pictures. I have yet to figure out exactly how I plan to fabricate the stroke mechanism.

 

Just do like aircraft systems and have a big accumulator and some valves.

 

I ran a lot of hydraulic driven equipment on the railroad and they had huge accumulators on them too. It was required because as we got up to speed going down the track, any cavitation in those pumps would dynamite the swash plate. We rebuilt quite a few pumps before they started installing them.

I remember being on one of the mainlines between Baltimore and Washington DC on AMTRAK at around midnight and blew the pumps, and the conductor looked at me and said, "what are you going to do now"? And I said, "I have no idea what I am going to do, but I know you are calling power control and dispatching a locomotive to haul us into the hole (siding)". He did, and we had just enough time to get in the clear before they started sending scoots (passenger trains) down the Northeast Corridor again.

Many a fun night on the railroad!

 

LT, is that pic in Baltimore by any chance?

 

Minnesota...

 

Not sure of cost, but I'm sure it's not cheap. (Boss has to pay me ya know.)


I work in the inspection department, we do bearing comparisons (Source Qualification Inspections) for many companies that do compare OEM to cheaper Chinese bearings. Most of the time OEM outshines the Chinese bearings, but the quality has improved considerably over the years.

I've been with my employer for 15 years now, and came on board when there were only 5 employees. Boss is a good man, who's created his business from the ground up, and creating jobs here. I'm proud to be one of his longest term employee's. Only one other person has been there longer by one year.

We specialize in Custom Bearing Manufacturing, Bearing Modification, Bearing Inspection, and Bearing testing.
Usually if a company wants testing to be done, I'll get bearings for complete destructive inspection, and then the boss will advise the companies if it's worth their $$ to bother with testing.

Can also proudly say that over the 15 years I've been there, I've never been laid off once.
2 years ago it was EXTREMELY slow.. market was tight. So I went out on the floor and did wiring of the test rigs we were building since I know wiring and soldering, and can read prints.
It pays to be flexible and competent in multiple areas.

 

That is not true. On mine you grease the rack after every five cords, which is a simple job. The flywheel bearings get greased every 100 hours. You keep the beam clean like you would on a hydraulic splitter. The rack runs out on sealed bearings, so lubrication has nothing to do with it returning.

 

Not the ones I have run, but these were also rented units and probably not taken care of and worn out. About every hour a little bar and chain oil had to be sloshed onto the beam so the spring would return it.

Do not get me wrong, I have nothing against these types of woodsplitters and have used them a lot.

 

It sounds like the bearings were wore out. I've heard that Super Splits are hard on bearings.

 

94BULLITT I checked out your splitter post on youtube, very cool.

Have never dealt with a kinetic splitter before, but I like it very much.
Anything that get's the work done quickly is good in my book.

 

Thanks, most of those videos are from when I first got it. I think I am faster with it now. We also got a conveyor last year which helps. Maybe someday I'll have a processor

 

Come on.. that thing doesn't stack it also??

I personally am not a lottery player, but I'd have to become one.. and a LUCKY one at that, in order to be in that kind of territory.

My boss likes me, and pays me well.. but not THAT well.

 

I sell a little wood. I have a ways to go to justify something like that. I'd probably build it myself but I'd need a skid steer to run it.

I've never bought lottery ticket.

 

If I really bothered to care, I could take my splitter to work and put it on the rest bench and determine losses etc. I work for a custom hydraulics systems integrator/ builder and distributor.

However, I know that even as low tonnage as it is, it just works.

 

It would also be interesting to see how different lubricants affected things.

 

Yep they have all been Super Splits.

The Amish have their own version here for sale, but around here they are not well liked so people do not buy them. They bring a few to the big Firewood Rendezvous we have every year (80 cord in 3 days), but those versions sit unused.

 

Of all the firewood processors I have seen, I actually like this the best; but I will be honest with you; I also like excavators. To me it just seems the most logical machine to mount a firewood processor on.

After building my feller-buncher, I can see no reason why this processor could not be built fairly easily. It looks complicated, but it really is not if you break it down into into its separate functions.

 

The wedge design on this splitter is one of the nicest I have seen.

 

Is this the Amish Version.

I like that. My great uncle has an old army truck that he put a loader on to load pulp wood back in the 60's. It has been sitting years and would need a complete hydraulics rebuild. I've thought about it and it would be a great start for a log trailer with a loader. I was thinking I could also make a processor for it too. He was talking about selling to a guy for scrap metal. I'm afraid to ask him what he wants for it, he might want something crazy.

If I'd ever get a procesor, I'd prefer that it could feed it self. I really don't want one that would require a loader to feed it. I want one that would be efficient with one man running it.

It wouldn't take much to turn your splitter into a processor.

 

I am moving in a different direction with my firewood processing. It means building (2) homemade implements, but will also get my firewood completely mechanized. The first was building the feller-buncher for my log loader, and the second part is building a firewood chunker, known in foreign language as a Rebak.

Now that I have the feller-buncher done, I can move on to fabricating the firewood chunker, which admittedly is the harder of the two to build. It is simple enough, it just has a lot more moving parts, many of which have to be purchased. I just felt I needed the feller-buncher because it takes all the work out of cutting some 500 saplings a year. That can sever-at-the-stump, then load the saplings onto my log loader in one fell swoop (literally). Then after I build my firewood chunker, run it through that to get my firewood. Push it up into my firewood shed and I am done.

But for my wood/coal stoves, the smaller chunks of wood should be ideal, and just going around the edges of my fields, cleaning up the margins should keep me in saplings for several years, but there is plenty in the woods as well.