WeFixIt

You were wrong before and you’re wrong again.
As I said, you clearly never spent much time feeding a chipper.

So I bow down to the get wise one so I my hear your words of wisdom, please continue with your own theory of knowledge.. & experience of using a wood chipper and explain the reasons why a 1” shaft of steel snaps like a twig?.....

Feed rollers once dug in to a piece of wood are feeding it in regards less of shape if it will physically go in it’s going in and that means compressing the shape and size via a nice smooth tapered hopper, once past that the narrowest point there’s room for expansion!
Rotating shaft pushed of centre the slightest bit bends forwards backwards up and down with ever rotation. That’s called stressed which I turn causes fatigue and failure!
Well everyone comments how fast a Forst chips!!
How many could honestly say they have only ever feed their chipper in a nice steady pace with no large y pieces, no cramping in as much as you can because it will take, never use reverse as it’s all small enough!..

Guess I must be wrong! Feed rollers shaft just snap like twigs for no reason!.. or maybe the hydraulic motors are so strong they just twist them off?.. everyone’s an expert until they break it!

 
And they are in difficulties , about to go down the pan and most of the blame is being pointed at the unreliability issues.
 
Bob

I think your find they probably aren’t!

"KPS is committed to the expeditious acquisition of Briggs & Stratton to provide certainty of outcome and confidence in the new Company's future for all of its stakeholders, including customers, employees and suppliers. The Company and its stakeholders will benefit from KPS' demonstrated commitment to manufacturing excellence, continuous improvement, global network, access to capital and significant financial resources. The new Briggs & Stratton will be conservatively capitalized and not encumbered by its predecessor's significant liabilities.

This is a job that has to be right !
Which includes running the chipper and checking bearing running temperature followed by adding or taking away shins where needed to achieve the correct temperature range otherwise failure is just waiting down the road..
Whoever you use just ask them how they insure the correct reload on the bearings !

Most common failure for feed roller shafts is large Y prices !

A chipper with good performing feed rollers will pull in most lengths of timber, Y prices squash through the hopper and spring open with great force causing feed roller shafts to fail or with some other brands of chipper it can brake the feed roller hydraulic motor drive shaft .

Cut your Y pieces, simple prevention failure is operators abuse!

It’s a chipper not a compactor

 

So who has seen the new Stihl fuel injection chainsaw?

 

And whats the verdict?

I Guess that's simple the beauty of Forst.. 

In theory yes you could !
But seriously it’s not designed to do that and it would void any warranty you have!

Your hydraulic system in your chipper is closed circuit if you start splitting joins apart or fitting QR fittings then you run the risk of getting contamination in the hydraulics and then your be buying a new pump, oil and filter!

Which would be the biggest part of buying a chipper with its own engine and pump and if you sell your current splitter your be even nearer!

Yeah your right! That’s what you get for texting faster than you can think..

 

Also blade set to close can suffer from wood/chip getting stuck between the two forcing the flywheel to flex and causing a undesirable effect!

 

13 hours ago, PeteB said:

Not always, managers manage a different set of scenarios, some of which will make no sense to an engineer while an engineer is black or white stuff and nothing in between. Having said that, an engineer and a business manager will always clash as they want different things out of the project.

So in your scenario what if the Manager is also the Engineer! or the Engineer is also the Director!?

On my A540 the gap between the blade and anvil increases in size along the blade. From memory I think it is smallest near the centre (some weeks since last blade change, I change them every 50 hours). I imagine this applies across the range of Jensen chippers. I set the gap near the centre to be as tight as possible, and check that each of the 3 blades is clearing the anvil. This works fine and stops the chip being too coarse on high roller speeds.
 
I always turn or replace the anvil every other blade change. The anvil can be skimmed to restore a sharp corner.

I’am guessing by the fact your adjusting the blades each time you have the older style flywheel which has 2 adjusting bolts on the rear edge of each blade!

In most cases the blade angle to anvil is adjusted by moving the main flywheel bearings
This will normally result in adjustment of reducing or increasing the gap but the the blade to anvil closest point is always the edge nearest the centre of the flywheel

If you have new or good flywheel bearings small gap is fine the outer edge is a larger gap still good! As the flywheel will isolate when spinning at speed a little bit and then you stick a lump of wood in its way and so it will then isolate a lot but that’s ok because you have a tapered blade gap

Make your gap to small and one day your be posting pictures of your chipper where the flywheel has been trying to climb out of the chipper or it’s spitting chunks of steel out of everywhere!

Anvil changing well like blades depends what your chipping! Some anvils are single use some are reversible those that are should only be turned once not each blade change or every other but when on inspection it is deemed no longer serviceable, refacing in some cases can be done but caution refacing some anvils could have undesired effects, the anvil has been manufactured the size it is for a reason! and it fits snuggle in position and is just the right height and thickness to do its job also like blades they are ground to angles to assist performance.

Like blades when fitting anvils it is so important to clean every bit of chip, dirt and crap out before fitting. As many will know but possibly some won’t a bit of dirt or wood or stone gets stuck between the anvil mounting and the anvil it will break down over time due to compression and vibrating and fall out like dust leaving you with a loose anvil next to a high speed spinning flywheel!! Or if it’s behind the anvil it could cause it to warp and make contact with the flywheel blades!

This is what a Jensen manual says!

Isn’t that the same as the engineer says one thing and the management sill have no idea!

Thanks wefixit!. So you are saying most people don't even bother shimming/checking the correct gap unless they are fitting new blades?.

What I was saying in the past 10 years I’ve only seen 3 Jensen chippers with shins fitted and I’ve seen quite a lot! Neither is that because they all had new blades fitted!

In Europe Jensen set the chippers with a wide gap at blade to anvil, when they were imported by Redwood they reset/reduced the gap for the UK market.
Therefore the gap produced by wear/resharpening has a bigger allowance before and issue of the gap being to big that shims are needed..

Simple rule to follow
Minimum of 2 mm (thickness of a standard hacksaw blade) less than 2 mm runs the risk of blade to anvil contact, this gap should always be set with a new set of blades,

Bolts, nuts,locking washer and mounting points on flywheel should be cleaned spotless, all traces of rust removed and a thin layer of copper grease to help stop corrosion, rust build up behind blades causes them to crack!

Despite Jensen supplying shims with the chippers when new, I’ve found many owners don’t use them!
I would be interested to hear how many do?

Little bit of self correction new blades and anvil!

Simple rule to follow
Minimum of 2 mm (thickness of a standard hacksaw blade) less than 2 mm runs the risk of blade to anvil contact, this gap should always be set with a new set of blades,

Bolts, nuts,locking washer and mounting points on flywheel should be cleaned spotless, all traces of rust removed and a thin layer of copper grease to help stop corrosion, rust build up behind blades causes them to crack!

Despite Jensen supplying shims with the chippers when new, I’ve found many owners don’t use them!
I would be interested to hear how many do?

I had the same issue and it took two hours to eventually remove the bolts as they’d been untouched for a long time when I first bought it.
I’ve now gone to Allen bolts and problem solved as well as using a little copper grease when on the threads.
Not had an issue with the greasing as yet.

Toro bolts are used for a reason!

A Torx head can... actually accept more torque than a hex head or Allen socket head as long as the proper torx bit is used, It's the same principle as a philips head screw as opposed to a slot head. The torx pattern has more bearing/contacting surface area to spread the torque force over.

Failure is usually due to incorrect size, worn tools or incorrect angle of use.

In relation to the torx bolts holding the blades on, a good quality impact driver (the type you hit with a hammer) with a socket style torx the correct size (IMPORTANT! Clean out torx head with small screw driver or pick) first tighten the torx bolt! One good blow of the hammer, then spray with penetrating fluid (WD40) now undo the torx bolt twith the impact drive 2-3 good hammer hits and they will normally be turning.

Once removed

Clean bolt threads with wire wheel or wire brush apply copper grease not loctite retighten
To torque setting.

Open the hood, remove the springs and open the rolers with the lift bar and wedge open with a suitable piece of timber, if you look at the back if the roller frame there is some groves that frequently get filled with crud and stop it closing fully, not always the easiest to clean out but will sort your problems.

When you left the top feed roll all the way up there is a threaded hole which one of the 2 bolts which hold down the flywheel top cover will screw in to and in sufficient will stop the feed roller from dropping back down
This is not only safer (no chance of a block slipping but it also leaves everything free to work on but the important bit is you screw the bolt in sufficiently if not all the way.

Open the hood, remove the springs and open the rolers with the lift bar and wedge open with a suitable piece of timber, if you look at the back if the roller frame there is some groves that frequently get filled with crud and stop it closing fully, not always the easiest to clean out but will sort your problems.

When you left the top feed roll all the way up there is a threaded hole which one of the 2 bolts which hold down the flywheel top cover will screw in to and in sufficient will stop the feed roller from dropping back down
This is not only safer (no chance of a block slipping but it also leaves everything free to work on but the important bit is you screw the bolt in sufficiently if not all the way.

On 24/07/2018 at 15:03, Mick Dempsey said:

The belt tensioner on my ST8 is inside the three belts, I’m 100% sure it’s been like that since I bought it new.

 

 I found it odd that the tensioner had no grooves like the pulleys that it services but it’s done 700 odd hours like that without issue (at least in that part of the machine) so I thought nothing of it.

 

Then I saw in the manual that the drawing shows the tensioner outside, which, in a way makes more sense, can another owner have a look at theirs to check please?

 

I checked with Redwood who said that it should be inside (like the photo of my machine) but I’d like some verification.

 

TIA.

Mick

 

 

 

 

The tensioner pulley does go on the inside, if you fit the belts on the outside you wont be able to apply any tension to the belts as the adjustment will only pull the idler roller outwards via the lock nut as can be seen in the above picture.

 

Just a little extra to add regarding belts - Don't over tighten your hydraulic pump drive belt! as this could cause premature wear and failure of the pump!!

 

These look quite useful - almost like a mini-Mog.  The 40 km/h is a bummer.
 
http://www.ausa.com/media/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/Urban_EN.pdf
 
http://www.ausa.com/products/m-350-h/

Was one of these on a AUSA training course back in 2001 they had just released it then with a single hook demountable body giving you multiple options! prices were around the £30,000 mark

I could do that. It would take me years to use, I would have a 200 ltr barrel in the way and then I'd have a barrel to dispose of. I can't see how that's better.

1. it’s cheaper in bulk
2. it good for years
3. no plastic waste
4. barrel is recyclable steel
5. Time saved mixing & buying fuel
6. It will always be better for your health

I know I can recycle, which effectively means landfill as I understand it. Either way, this is where pump petrol, where you reuse the container rather than recycle, has the only advantage as I see it.

 

 

If I could buy Aspen without throwing away containers, I'd switch over completely today.

 

 

 

You could always buy ASPEN in 200 Ltr barrels!

No plastic to recycle....

To be fair the repairs to Forst chippers has got less as time goes by
As lessons have been learnt, prevention has been put in place in most cases..

Whats the difference in spec between a 222 and a 252?
 
love my old 252! Ground loads of stumps with it and some huge ones at that! Very capable

I believe yours has auto sweep and more horse power and slightly more refined!