Chipper / Shredder...... any brand recommendations

[KMurphyAL]

I'm going to be buying a chipper/shredder. Anyone want to weigh in on good ones..bad ones?

Also, I like the idea of getting one with a feed mechanism. I've seen them on trailer mounted chippers and they are easy to use and feed.

Thanks..... Kris

 

[Cliff_Johns]

I think you need to give us some idea of the size you need and the usage. That is, how much wood are you chipping/schredding each year? At what size do you consider wood to be fire wood rather than food for your chipper? That kind of thing.

Oh, and I think you'll find a lot of discussion if you do a search on chipper, especially in the attachments thread. Lots of good discussion.

Cliff

 

[RamDiesel]

Woods 8100, or Valby CH 160 HF. Both are hydraulic feed and
high quality.

Dirt

 

[4x4sche]

I have a Valby which is PTO driven and it has a hydraulic feed roller driven off a tractor remote. Expect to spend over $6,000 for one of these. (It is actually made by Farmi in Finland.)

Takes 6" branches with ease. (Tractor is an L5030).

 

[Angus99]

I have a Jinma (Chinese) chipper also marketed as Farm Pro. For the money (you can find them for $1,100 to $1,400), it's an amazing piece of equipment. I doubt it's built as well as the premier brands, but it's worked well for me on 4" to 5" material & it self-feeds horizontally (a major back-saver). It's supposed to handle 6" logs, but I usually split logs that big.) There are threads on the attachment forum that detail a minor, but annoying, problem with retaining clips. It's also heavy (850 lbs.) My 3130 handles it with ease, but I make sure I don't get sideways on a hill with it.

Good luck.

Ian

 

[MadDog]

I have a Wood Pro AVP PTO-driven chipper/shredder. It is distributed by Vandermolen Corp. in New Jersey and cost me (last year) about $4,800. It is a well made and very powerful machine and the folks at Vandermolen were helpful and nice to deal with.

It doesn't have power feed, but doesn't need it since the feed hopper is slanted down and that plus the action of the chipper knives draws material in by itself. Does a good job on anything up to about 5". Above that, and even a bit smaller, I use for firewood anyway. Last summer I chopped up a brush pile that was 30'x20'x10'high in less than a weekend.

I also like the design because the hopper placement and dimensions are such that it is virtually impossible for you to get any body part near the blades. I think that chipper/shredders are among the most dangerous attachments that CUT owners use. The cutting/shredding disks are 30" in diameter and I figure that they are spinning at over 2500rpm so you don't want there to be ANY chance of gettin' sucked in!! /forums/images/graemlins/shocked.gif

Another thing you want to be careful about is that if you want shredding as well as chipping capability (for soft vegetation) make sure that the machines you look at have both. I found that quite a few PTO machines were strictly chippers and not suitable for processing leaves and soft stemmed materials.

Hope this helps.