PTO wood chipper on a BX

[Michael Aos]

Was going to use the Harbor Freight chipper last weekend. Had a 5x10 dump trailer heaped with limbs.

Wound up running them over to the local landscaping place instead. They let me dump them them on their to-be-mulched pile for $6.

Seems like a good deal -vs- spending an hour lopping the limbs down small-enough to fit into the chipper.
--

 

[rktman26]

I received my Woodmax TM-86H about three weeks ago, and have just shy of six hours on it.

So far, I've been very pleased with it's performance, coupled with my BX-25.

It's eaten everything I've thrown into it, and hardly slowed at all.

Today, I cut a down a pin, about 20' tall and 6" diameter at the base. The tree went from standing to chips in under three minutes. We're using the wood chips to fill in low/wet spots on our property for now. We'll mulch and compost some as well.

I only have two complaints, one is hardly worth mentioning. The safety bar that controls the feed doesn't like to stay in drive. The two bolts that it pivots on tend to loosen up, despite being secured with Nylock nuts.

The other, is the feed mechanism has speed settings from 1-10, but only feeds above about 4. It still feeds fine, but I'd like to be able to slow the feed way down for the bigger, heavier stuff. I'll give Woodmax a call next week and see what they say.

I've been very happy with it so far, and would recommend the TM-86H to anyone with a BX-25.

 

[ericm979]

The other, is the feed mechanism has speed settings from 1-10, but only feeds above about 4. It still feeds fine, but I'd like to be able to slow the feed way down for the bigger, heavier stuff. I'll give Woodmax a call next week and see what they say.

Did you hear anything from Woomaxx? My 8H does something similar. I measured with a contact tachometer. From '10' to '4' it's 75 fpm (45 rpm on a 6.5" diameter roller). There is very narrow band around '3.5' where the speed is 28 fpm (17 rpm). Below that it's zero.

I called Woodmaxx during business hours and no one answered the service line so I left a message. Waited a full day and then used their on line form. I got a return email the next morning which was apologetic but did not address the issue (I'd included rpm but not fpm, and the person answering was confused by that). I replied with fpm information on Thursday morning and have not heard anything back. It's not a big deal in that I can use the chipper but I'd like to have more than two feed speeds.

Maybe you can try some threadlocker compound on the safety bar nuts, or jam nuts if the bolt is long enough. I'll check mine.

 

[rktman26]

Did you hear anything from Woomaxx? My 8H does something similar. I measured with a contact tachometer. From '10' to '4' it's 75 fpm (45 rpm on a 6.5" diameter roller). There is very narrow band around '3.5' where the speed is 28 fpm (17 rpm). Below that it's zero.

I called Woodmaxx during business hours and no one answered the service line so I left a message. Waited a full day and then used their on line form. I got a return email the next morning which was apologetic but did not address the issue (I'd included rpm but not fpm, and the person answering was confused by that). I replied with fpm information on Thursday morning and have not heard anything back. It's not a big deal in that I can use the chipper but I'd like to have more than two feed speeds.

Maybe you can try some threadlocker compound on the safety bar nuts, or jam nuts if the bolt is long enough. I'll check mine.

Sorry I haven't responded. I've been traveling.

I was able to get the safety bar fixed, at least temporarily. I tightened the bolts up fairly snug and it seems to hold. I bought 18mm & 19mm wrenches that I'll keep in the document holder on top of the chipper, where the pin is stored. They came in handy when I had to open up the cover for the rotor to clear a discharge chute jam. The chipper does not mind chewing up fresh pine trees, but the needles occasionally get caught in the discharge chute and the chipper gets backed up.

I haven't tinkered with the feed speed, because I've been out of town, but I'm not to concerned either. At least not yet. I've ran some pretty big stuff through it and it has barely slowed down. I joked with my wife that Woodmaxx should infringe on the Post Office flat rate slogan: "If it fits, it chips".

I'll be doing the 50 hour service on the tractor this week, so I'll look a little more closely at the feed speed lever.

 

[Tractor Seabee]

I had a 6" JINMA that I used on my BX25. Never used it to its capacity so do not know about that part. Ran fine; you had to ramp up the speed slowly or it would stall the engine. Took a long time to wind done. You did not want to move it when ramping down or w/o setting on the ground. Once up to speed it never even knew a 3" limb was going through it. I didn't get the 6" to chip stuff that big but to have a big input chute for bunches of branches at a time. I had a huge pile of them left over from logging. It was a horizontal with a feed roller so easy to feed. They cost around $1800 new. Bought it for $1K went through 4 double sided knife sharpenings, had a mountain of chips, and sold lat fall for $900. Saved a lot of rental money.

Ron