Flail Mower Let's talk flail mowers

[kimaran]

No that is not what I said. I replaced lost knives and clevises with the same type from a different manufacturer. In my case the new clevises weighed a bit more but the knives were a pretty close match.

Ok I see

 

[kimaran]

I'm not sure if I would make that assumption. To keep proper balance all the knives/hammers need to be of similar weight. If you havent already done so, you should read the entire thread of posts as this has been discussed several times.

Hope this helps. I'm sure someone with more knowledge will explain better.

I'm learning a lot from this forum thank you all so much

 

[sidecarist]

Well my woodmaxx is on a truck in Nashville scheduled for delivery on monday. Sadly I'll be on a plane by then. It will be a week or so before I can pick it up...

 

[Dan in MN]

I'm very interested to hear how the Woodmaxx works for you. Which knives are on it?

I replaced all the side cutters on my Value Leader with scoop knives and while it does seem to cut a little bit better, I get some nasty shuddering with them too. It's not vibration due to imbalance or anything, almost seems like they are picking up too much material. Just mowed a couple of acres of 8-10" grass yesterday and it works smooth while going in the direction that the winds have laid the grass down, but coming back where the grass is laid towards the mower it seems to grab too much and I get this shuddering vibration at times that is no good.. I have it set fairly low right now and will try it a bit more raised up another inch or so, but for now it looks like the scoop knives will have to come back off..

 

[sidecarist]

I'm very interested to hear how the Woodmaxx works for you. Which knives are on it?

I replaced all the side cutters on my Value Leader with scoop knives and while it does seem to cut a little bit better, I get some nasty shuddering with them too. It's not vibration due to imbalance or anything, almost seems like they are picking up too much material. Just mowed a couple of acres of 8-10" grass yesterday and it works smooth while going in the direction that the winds have laid the grass down, but coming back where the grass is laid towards the mower it seems to grab too much and I get this shuddering vibration at times that is no good.. I have it set fairly low right now and will try it a bit more raised up another inch or so, but for now it looks like the scoop knives will have to come back off..

I ordered it with scoop knives, but also ordered a set of side slicers plus some spares of each...

It will be a week + before I can try it. I'll certainly let everyone know how it works. Things have been so dry that I don't have much grass to cut, but I do have a couple of acres of weeds Iabout 12in high to try it on.

I wonder if you should slow down more to allow the mower to cut more freely or are you already at the lowest speed? I haven't owned a flail before, but have been told not to expect high mowing speeds because of the finer mulch compared to a rotary.

 

[DieselBound]

Yeah, what sidecarist said. I think you have to slow down. Not sure what kind of grass but I did some mowing for a neighbor this past summer and I was amazed at how much slower I had to run because the grass was MUCH more dense than anything that I have: not enough tractor power (23hp at PTO running 5' rotary) to keep the rotary spinning hard at a higher speed. Had to allow more time for the grass to be chopped up enough to settling down and under the mowing deck as I moved forward. I suspect stuff like I mowed would be like mowing sparsely spaced 1/4" brush in which you'd have to slow down (and know why). I don't think that I'd want to mow this way on a regular basis; if I had to I'd most certainly look for a different arrangement.

 

[leonz]

I'm very interested to hear how the Woodmaxx works for you. Which knives are on it?

I replaced all the side cutters on my Value Leader with scoop knives and while it does seem to cut a little bit better, I get some nasty shuddering with them too. It's not vibration due to imbalance or anything, almost seems like they are picking up too much material. Just mowed a couple of acres of 8-10" grass yesterday and it works smooth while going in the direction that the winds have laid the grass down, but coming back where the grass is laid towards the mower it seems to grab too much and I get this shuddering vibration at times that is no good.. I have it set fairly low right now and will try it a bit more raised up another inch or so, but for now it looks like the scoop knives will have to come back off..

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You need to raise the cutting height of the mower to avoid what you have experienced as the pressure gradient created by the flail mower rotors reverse rotation is pulling up all the grass and brush and the full width of the scoop knives is contacting the brush as the mower advances and slicing as much as they can slice as the mower travels forward.

Your side slicers would have less difficulty when mowing but that depends strictly on the tractors forward speed and the PTO speed at the 540 RPM rear PTO engine speed to power the integral flail mower.

Until you have this acreage mowed to a 2 inch height you will have issues with the brush depth and height.

 

[sodamo]

I have used the side slicers and hammers on both my Value Leader and Farmer Helper (really same) and much prefer the hammers. Have wondered about scoops, but also if they could be mounted differently, like the Clovis mount. To be honest I mow slow, usually in low low. Speed just isn't a concern and and in some areas just too much slope for low high or whatever it might be called.

 

[kco]

Because we can buy gear box from professional gear box factory, so the rotor is the most difficult part for us mower manufacturers.
There is ISO international standard of mechanical vibration, flail mower rotor is G16 grade
View attachment 484143
so after calculation, your mower, I think you mentioned it is AG model, right? so I called it as BCS model in my factory.
View attachment 484150
it means the unbalance weight is totally 3 gram on the rotor. This international standard is quite harsh.

So I don't think any mower manufacturer could really make all the mower like this. I bought some foreign brand mowers these years, all of them are top brand in the market. Obviously, different factory set up different standard for their rotor vibration, from 50 gram to 200 gram. Because I don't buy hundreds of these famous brand mowers, and I don't have contact in these foreign factory, so I cannot know their exact standard. But I know the standard of the Chinese mower manufacturers, normally we define it as 100 gram on rotor, but I m sure very few of them execute this strictly. So I set up standard like this:
1. 30 x ISO standard, for example, BCS model, I define it as 90 gram this year(next step is 20X).
2. at most two pcs balance weight block on each rotor end this year(next step is one pcs each end)
3. fully weld balance weight block on rotor end
And the most important thing, I employ third-part person to inspect rotor balancing and record it, to avoid worker's mistake.

I m now use 1240 gram hammer on BCS mower.

For the hammer, I started to use forging hammer on all of my mowers two years ago, because at that time, I found the casting hammer has bigger weight difference than forging hammer. For example the gram hammer on EFGC mower, casting hammer has nearly 35 gram weight difference, forging hammer has nearly 20 gram weight difference. Because forging hammer doesn't increase much cost than casting hammer, so I decided to shift all the mowers to use forging hammer. For the price and technical reason, hammer factories cannot produce very small weight difference as I expected. So I turned to another solution, I set up weight different standard in my factory, worker weigh all the hammers before they assemble on rotor, so the rotor has the hammers in same weight range, each range has 10 gram difference. And I has record for all the mowers used which weight range hammer.

Anyway, I only started this business 3 years, I realize Chinese mower fall behind a lot than foreign top brand mowers, but I m trying to do my best and keep improving, wish I can catch up or get close in some years, there are still 3 or 4 decade before I retire.

Thank you for the reply Jack. I have been away for a couple of weeks and thus my late reply.

Your information is valuable to show us how to evaluate and compare the quality of mowers. My mower and some similar mowers that appear the same as the Victory brand likely have rotors rejected by your inspector. The mowers on the Victory website look well finished and are no doubt higher quality than my "no name" mower. I think your friend at Victory mower should add a section to his website documenting items you stated here. His prices look very good but such quality control information could give his product another positive selling point.

My mower has cast hammers averaging about 1,040 grams and my sample size of 36 blades ranged from 1,000 to 1,070 grams. The blade cutting width is about 140 mm. My blades appear to weigh 200 grams less than yours.

I adopted a strategy similar to yours to get the weights within a few grams. I ground each set to within a few grams of the lightest blade in the set. I will likely put a maximum of 50 hours on the mower each season. I will change out the complete set at the start of the season and recondition the old set. As I gain experience I find I am getting better at avoiding blade damage.

Thanks again for showing us how to evaluate mowers. I think many would be happy with the Victory mower.

EDIT: I forgot to mention the Victory mower's very good manual which I copied for my mower (which had no manual).

 

[Jack Yuan]

Thank you for the reply Jack. I have been away for a couple of weeks and thus my late reply.

Your information is valuable to show us how to evaluate and compare the quality of mowers. My mower and some similar mowers that appear the same as the Victory brand likely have rotors rejected by your inspector. The mowers on the Victory website look well finished and are no doubt higher quality than my "no name" mower. I think your friend at Victory mower should add a section to his website documenting items you stated here. His prices look very good but such quality control information could give his product another positive selling point.

My mower has cast hammers averaging about 1,040 grams and my sample size of 36 blades ranged from 1,000 to 1,070 grams. The blade cutting width is about 140 mm. My blades appear to weigh 200 grams less than yours.

I adopted a strategy similar to yours to get the weights within a few grams. I ground each set to within a few grams of the lightest blade in the set. I will likely put a maximum of 50 hours on the mower each season. I will change out the complete set at the start of the season and recondition the old set. As I gain experience I find I am getting better at avoiding blade damage.

Thanks again for showing us how to evaluate mowers. I think many would be happy with the Victory mower.

EDIT: I forgot to mention the Victory mower's very good manual which I copied for my mower (which had no manual).

To be honest, I wrote those manual almost three years ago, although I spent complete 3 months to make them, but I think they are too old when I look them now, sooooo many mistakes in them. So I m working on new manuals and you will see them nearly 3 months later.

Most Chinese company would not like spend time on manuals, at least I didn't see any other Chinese implement company has better manual than mine, I m sure some of them will copy mine soon. I m fine with this, good ideas worth spreading.

Your AG mower is one of the heavy duty mower in all the Chinese mowers. Enjoy it.