muddstopper, that is a serious looking splitter. you did alot of fab word on that as seen in the pictures. great job. i appreciated the close up or the hyd/lift mechinism to raise lower the wedge. i don't think i will go with hydraulic, but maybe something else to substitute, but keep the cam idea. as for the "c" channel that the 4 way is guided in at the rear of the splitter, that is sorta how i pictured it in my head. i am leaning towards just a hand/mechanical raise/ lower of the 4 way and after seeing your pic of the rear "c" channel/slide i am now thinking having a series of holes drilled in both the wedge and "c" channel sides that line up and just using a pin/bolt to go through the set of holes to lock at desired height. not as good as your hyd raise/lower, but simpler for me.
As for lifting the wedge, You can always substitude a mechanical lever setup in place of the hydraulic cylinder, but I think you would really get tired of that methoid in a very short time. My wedge is pretty heavy and lifting with a lever would mean a pretty long lever to make lifting easy. Probably take two hands and a lot of grunt work. Hydraulics are not that hard and parts can be found at the local scrap yard pretty cheap. You can use your current control valve like it is and plumb in a power beyond valve before the splitter valve. I got my lift valve off of a old scraped ditchwitch trencher for $10.
another question. is there any issue with the 2 lower pieces of splitting wood getting jammed against the i beam as it is splitting/spreading apart downward off the horizontal split? maybe that could be advoided by not having much flat surface under the 4 way wings?
If you look closely at my lift assembly, you will notice that the wedge just sits ontop of the lift arms. I used a sealed bearing at the bottom of the lift arms which allows the blade to just coast along the lift arms as it is raised. With this setup, any wood that wedges under the splitting wedge will just lift the blade since it sets freely inside the hbeam. You should also be able to notice that the wing wedges are only sharpen on the top side, this allows the bottom half of the split to just slide under the wedge instead of being forced downward as it is split. The bottom half of the split just slides along the top of the hbeam and so far hasnt caused me any issues with getting stuck or bound between the wedge or hbeam.
another question. how much support might be needed to brace the "c" channel at the rear? i see in the picture it looks like the entire height of "c" channel and about 5-8" in the back? probably i should go over kill on it as i am sure it will take quite a bit of stress/strain.
What I did, I did because my Hbeam wasnt long enought to start with so I had to extend it. I was able to cut the web out of the hbeam and slot the top and bottom to allow the blade to slide thru the beam, but there just wasnt enought hbeam to add a backbone to support the wedge. What I did was to add a peice of metal, I used 3/4in plate simply because thats what I had on hand. I used scrap metal to shim the extentions for the proper width of the blade and then welded it to the hbeam on each side. I placed the backbone inbetween the extentions and welded it in place. Because the top and bottom of the hbeam wanted to flex with out any support, I added a piece of 6in channel to the extentions and welded the hbeam flanges to it. All this added metal made the wedge super rigid and I dont see any flexing or twisting while splitting. I dont know if you can see it in the pics, but I had to add similar metal at the back to support the cylinder. If my hbeam had been longer, I would have probably built it different.
yet another question. if i did go with a hydraulic raise lower, would it be able to be incorporated on the splitter with the existing valve. just run flow through first valve (ram) and then through another oc valve that run the raise lower? would this slow cycle time or decrease splitting force? and i was told hyd valves are expensive= close to $1000. wow!!! plus hoses, fittings, and such. special valve i would need?
I think I already answerd this, but I cant see anywhere you would have to spend $1000 for a hydraulic valve. Go to the scrap yard and look for any piece of hydraulic equipment and get the valves off of it. You do need to make sure the valve is compatable for power beyond and large enought to support the flow of your hydraulic pump. Most likely, you current splitting valve is not power beyond capable but you would add the new valve before the splitter valve in your hydraulic circuit. While robbing the scrap valve, also get the fittings and hoses. If the hoses are to long, you can always cut one end off and have a new fitting crimped on. This will be a lot cheaper than having all new hoses made up. How much you invest on this project will depend on how resourcefull you are at scaveging parts at the scrap yard and by how much of the fab work you can do yourself. And dont forget to look for a hydraulic cylinder to use for your wedge lift while at the scrap yard, I am using a steering cylinder off a small backhoe. My cylinder is only about a 1 1/2in bore with a 6in stroke. It is low pressure so make sure if you go that route that you lower the pressure settings to less than 1000psi. You would do this at the control valve and it wont effect the splitting pressure of your splitting ram.
