best small chipper

[Theocus]

The smart feed had issues and was holding the wood against the blades. The may not of been razor sharp but the infeed as can be heard was the issue with this machine. The 160 is an interesting machine, great idea but not there yet.

[Dean Lofthouse]

The smart feed had issues and was holding the wood against the blades. The may not of been razor sharp but the infeed as can be heard was the issue with this machine. The 160 is an interesting machine, great idea but not there yet.

 

the bandit holds the wood against the blades, but if they are sharp it takes a shaving off, if they arent then it heats up the blade edge and dulls very quickly, once it starts smoking, you may as well pack in.

 

the 160's are a crappy small chipper I know, but rely on very sharp blades for their performance, even 10 hours use is far too much without a sharpen

 

Like I say, I remove and touch up the bandit blades twice a week, if it,s been chipping all day, i do it that evening. Totally different machine otherwise

[TimberCutterDartmoor]

That vermeer is unbelievably bad!

[Robert_S]

That vermeer is unbelievably bad!

 

Agree, it looks total rubbish

 

My old 5" camon chipped better than that.

[PeteB]

Come on chaps!, the op was asking about small chippers, this is turning into a knockfest against one machine!

 

There was I, basking in the glory! Now the shift has turned....

 

The GM 1523 turbo is a good tool too.

[Dean Lofthouse]

A lot of machines get knocked when bad maintainance is the real cause.

[PeteB]

Fair comment Dean...

 

I recently saw a a machine which had 430 hours on the clock and still had the original filters on it! He will get a phone call today:sneaky2:

[Theocus]

Can i just say before anyone thinks it was our 160 chipper, that machine was handed to us the night before by Vermeer as our chipper was taken away for fixing and that was how it performed in the morning.

 

Back to the topic

 

Small chippers that i have used and thought were brilliant, Timberwolf 5inch petrol V twin. Great machine to work on as well,

Have also used the Greenmech eco chip another great little machine.

[monkeybusiness]

We regularly run disk-bladed Greenmechs for 100 hrs between oil changes before even looking at the blades and they keep on chipping efficiently with no problem at all (although the chip quality can be quite poor at the end). I agree that super sharp blades make any machine perform amazingly, but the drop off in performance with the GMs is negligible - if the machine starts struggling it is usually because some tool has put something hard through and taken a chunk out of a blade (but even then they'll still chip!).

[shillo]

ive just had the quad chip on demo. i was very impressed with the versatility of the machine, the ability to chip as conventional road tow with turntable or to use as tracked machine is a great plus. The chipping performance was very nearly as good as the jensen 540 i had on demo the week before. The longevity of the machine is in my mind the only question mark.