Chipper clogged by pine needles

[oosik]

Based upon what I chip - I might have to go to the second edge on my Wally knives sometime in the far future.

Nine years on the first side - still razor sharp. I average 800 to 1000 small pines every other year.

It was EVERY year - there for the first five years or so. But I'm getting old and lazy.

 

[Jack Yuan]

Easy. Don't always feed it pipe branches with too much needles, feed some real wood log after pine. The chipped wood pieces is much easier to be blown out than pine needles. If you always ONLY feed pine needles, then the needles will stuck more and more in the bottom of chipper housing, then when you feed reall wood, these wood pieces will help to blow out the needles.

Just have more pratice with your chipper, then you will get used to work with it.

 

[SylvainG]

Easy. Don't always feed it pipe branches with too much needles, feed some real wood log after pine. The chipped wood pieces is much easier to be blown out than pine needles. If you always ONLY feed pine needles, then the needles will stuck more and more in the bottom of chipper housing, then when you feed reall wood, these wood pieces will help to blow out the needles.

Just have more pratice with your chipper, then you will get used to work with it.

Thing is, last winter, the ice storm we had mainly broke branches off pine trees, so that's about all I had to chip. Cleaning the chute with diesel to remove the gum helped alot. Was basically wondering if there is a wax type product I could use that would prevent the pine sieve from sticking to the chute so I don't have to clean it that often.

 

[ericm979]

Silicone spray? At least it would be quick and easy to apply, and it probably won't make it worse.

 

[jb1390]

So because of that big freezing rain event last winter, we lost many pine's branches that I had to chip this weekend. The first hour went fine, then the chute clogged with pine needles, like real hard packed, bogging the tractor. After unclogging the chute, I went at it again but that only lasted a few minutes before it was clogged again :-( So using diesel, I cleaned the inside of the chute that was all gummed up and I was able to finish the job (about half an hour). Now my question is, what can I do (beside not chipping fresh pine branches) to prevent this from happening? Would waxing the inside of the chute help and if yes, what can of wax should I use? Chipper is a Woodland Mills WC68.

Thanks.

On my woodland 8H, I sometimes had problems clogging the chute when the chipper would bog down or the belts would slip. If the airflow was high, I never had an issue. I did have an issue on the edge of the flywheel, when chipping pine, where pitch and shavings would stick between the flywheel and the housing. That would cause it to smoke and slip the belts much easier. My solution was to put a couple weld beads perpendicular to the flyweel on its edge, such that the weld bead would sweep out anything and prevent it from acting like a brake. Before doing that mod, sometimes I would dump a little diesel in, which would work for a little bit but not long term.

So a couple things to check. One is to make sure that you aren't having clogging issues somewhere other than the chute, which might lead to the chute getting clogged. The next thing is to make sure you're operating at a high enough rpm to have adequate airflow.

It would also make sense that smaller chutes are going to get stickier faster than larger chutes. This will be worse when you're not making many big chips to blast the surface clean.

 

[5030]

Speaking of clogging, This winter I am adding (fabricating a swing door) to retrofit to one of my arborist's commercial, diesel powered Bandit chippers. He has a clog problem with it chipping some softwoods and unclogging his chute entails a lot of time, so I'll fabricate a swing down door to fit the chipper snout, just above the chipper head so he can open the door and unclog it when it gets clogged. Doing tree work is 100% based on the job and not on downtime and commercial arborist's like to run their chipper knives until very dull anyway (and then I get them for a regrind).

 

[jb1390]

On my woodland 8H, I sometimes had problems clogging the chute when the chipper would bog down or the belts would slip. If the airflow was high, I never had an issue. I did have an issue on the edge of the flywheel, when chipping pine, where pitch and shavings would stick between the flywheel and the housing. That would cause it to smoke and slip the belts much easier. My solution was to put a couple weld beads perpendicular to the flyweel on its edge, such that the weld bead would sweep out anything and prevent it from acting like a brake. Before doing that mod, sometimes I would dump a little diesel in, which would work for a little bit but not long term.

So a couple things to check. One is to make sure that you aren't having clogging issues somewhere other than the chute, which might lead to the chute getting clogged. The next thing is to make sure you're operating at a high enough rpm to have adequate airflow.

It would also make sense that smaller chutes are going to get stickier faster than larger chutes. This will be worse when you're not making many big chips to blast the surface clean.

Looking at the WM 68 on their website, it appears like this is a direct drive? So no belts or anything to increase the speed of the flywheel?

If that's the case, I suspect that the air flow and knife speed on this unit is very low. So it makes sense it wouldn't take much sticky stuff to clog it up.

I would think one of the best things you could do is to remove the chute and soak it with some diesel or heating oil after you're done, to ensure that the next job you start squeaky clean. But I suspect you're going to be fighting a little bit of an uphill battle.

If starting with a clean chute, I would try fluid film to see how that works. If that doesn't hold up, maybe a little bit of used oil wiped on the inside.

 

[oosik]

Lets face it. As long as you are chipping green material - you will have to deal with pitch, sap, drool, etc. There are ways to overcome this.
- stack the material and let it dry out
- larger chipper, more hp, higher air flow, larger discharge chute
- run dry material thru the chipper to clean it out
- stop the operation and douche out the discharge chute

I've had the opportunity to do all of the above. For what I'm doing - going larger has solved my problem.