Mulcher heads: Hydraulic or PTO driven?

[Gamma]

Let's discuss the pro's & con's of hydraulic vs. PTO driven mulching heads.

Let's hear some first hand comments by those that have owned &/or operated both types. Manufacturers feel free to chime in too.

Assume the prime mover is identical for each type of head except for the obvious differences due to having hydraulics or PTO hardware. Also assume identical rotors & teeth.

Possible topics, feel free to add more:

So which one will out perform the other in identical conditions (remember... the same machine with identical engines, etc.)? (I've heard that the PTO machines will)

Which one will be more dependable? (Maybe the PTO due to having fewer hydraulic leak possibilities, fewer hydraulic motors & pumps, etc.?)

Rotor recovery time? Resistance to rotor slowing down? Advantages of Load Sensing with the hydraulic sytem over the PTO not having it? Or does the PTO system rely on the engine automatically maintaining a constant operating speed for it's version of 'load sensing'?

 

[cbturf]

OK G Man here we go,

PTO or hydraulic which is better...neither maybe? It really depends on you and your jobs.

The jobs that I just left in NM are probably better served with a machine with loader arm cutter mount and rubber tires here, direct drives are limited by drive line angles so you need hydraulic.

Cutting big hard wood and you need maximum power to the head, direct drive all the way. Engine power goes to the head rather than through the fluid system. Your power is dissipated in the wood not through the radiators.

Recovery time is no contest, a direct drive is instant.

As far as maintenance goes I would lean towards direct drive. There
are more things to grease but fewer places for leaks to hide. You will have leaks and broken fittings, mulching is a tough job, just fewer things to potentially go wrong.

So the moral of the story is...what do you do?
need reach and speed=need hydraulic
need big power and less maintenance=need direct drive

My opinions are based on running the FTX-140 and the Kodiak B-160 (demo nit mine is still not finished). The Kodiak has twice the cutting power of the Fecon (now let me defend Fecon for a minute) but the FTX has a 4 cylinder machine rated at only 140 HP and the Kodiak has a 6 cylinder rated at 160 HP. The Fecon has a paddle type rotor and the Kodiak has a spiral pattern smooth drum (which is a better cutter than the paddle type). Another point of note is the fuel burn. The 6 cyl Cummins will run as long on 35 gallons that the John Deere will run on 50. I think this has to do with the cycle and recovery time. When you drag the Kodiak down and have to let it recover by the time you move the head out of the wood and get into position it is ready to go. Less time at full power getting the head moving again when you're ready it's ready.

 

[SSP&M]

I run supertrak mulchers, which everone knows are hydrualic. I had a chance to run a Kodiak B160 for several hours. It was the only PTO mulching machine that i have run. kodiak put on a big demo in our area with a B160 and the 400hp PTO machine. We went there with the possibility to add one to our fleet. The sales pitch on the B160 was awsome, but after the first few minutes of the demo i bet half the people left. It was awful. A few of us stuck around to actually run the machine ourselves. The pitch was that you lose so much power through hydrualics and you have the heat that goes along with it also that you lose productivity and power through the day. There comment was that the 160 hp PTO would cut with a 200hp hydrualic machine so i have big expectations and just had to run it. Evidently, they havent run many other types of machines. I dont want to down play the B160, just comparing the PTO to Hyd..

My SK120 has a 127Hp 4cyl cat engine, b160 has a 5.9 6cyl cummins with 160hp. that alone should out cut my machine. one thing i noticed was the recovery speed with the PTO. it was almost instant, but i dont think the cutting power was that much better, if any, then my 120. I am used to using a loader so the limit of movement was a big deal to me also and when you raised the mower up the PTO u joints would chatter bad. THe salesman also said that you will break an output shaft (that was the weakpoint in the system) he said it may last 200-500 hrs
My point to the salesman was if i had a 160hp cummins and the hydraulics to go with it on my sk120 my machine would out perform the mess out of the kodiak. I dont know if that was a downfall on there machine or the PTO vs hydraulics. I feel very confident that in an 8 hr day my 100hp supertrak tak with be as productive if not alittle more then the b160 and the sk120 would do a great deal more and both of them for less money.

Other companys comment on the PTO by saying that its old school, that we came out with hydrualics to get away from shafts and gear boxs and all that good stuff.

My experience with Hyd. has been faily good. Just bust a hose every-once-in-a-while mostly due to rubbing on trees or the mower. The only bad thing i see is pumps will wear out and when they do they can contaminate the whole machine and can cause metal to go into every valve, hose, pump, motor and be a real headache.

The Pto machine was simple, easy to work on and i think it would have very little maintaince. I used to farm though and hate shafts, hard to grease, breaking input or output shafts, u-joints go out, bend the shaft then raise the mower and something is going to break because the shaft cant slide inside itself.

I would like to see a true same hp pto vs hyd to determine the better route.
CMI makes a 125hp machine, maybe someone can comment on it and compare it to a sk120 or another hydrualic machine with close to the same power.

 

[cbturf]

My experience shure has been different than yours. I have run my Fecon many hours, a Prentice 190hp machine for a couple of days a Supertrak SK 300 for a few days and the Kodiak B160 for a few days and the Kodiak is the fastest grinding machine out of them all (even the 300 hp Supertrak!!!) Once you get used to the reach thing, which is a little less than even the FTX-140, you can grind super fast on the Kodiak. You can tell that a direct drive is more efficient as soon as you inspect the machine, you will notice an obvious lack of coolers. When you set up a hydraulic system you will have at least 30% of your power blown away as heat through your coolers. The Kodiak is a faster grinder than the 300 hp Supertrak because of its manuverability. I am super that if I were working in some big heavy wood I would have been more impressed by the big girl but she was just to huge and lumbering to suit my style. Unfortunately even the best hydraulic system will give up 30% efficiency meaning that your SK 120 will put out about 63 or 64 true HHP where as the direct drive of the Kodiak puts out the whole 160 to the head. Like I said in my earlier post each is better for different applications but for power to the head there is no comparison.

 

[SSP&M]

i believe there is horsepower lost through the torque convertor on that machine 10-15% but i may be wrong. I guess my big deal was that they said it would cut with a 200hp hyd machine and the one that i demod would not cut with my 120hp machine, the kodiak might not of been set up right. Like i said though performance wise my 120 would cut more acres in 8hrs then the B160 that i demod, easily.

but on that same regard, the 400hp pto machine was depressing also, he cut a 14" pine and it took for ever to get mulched up, finally he just covered the log up with mulch. a gt25 would run circles around it and out cut it (until it tore up) Gyrocrap

i really thought it was going to be the answer to what we needed and maybe we need to demo another one. I just wish they had a 6ft head that might help my thinking on productivity.

The fecon guy even told us that PTO was very efficient and cuts real well, but they use the hydraulics mostly where they dont have to worry about driveline angle problems and the mowers are easier to adapt to different machines.

Just get a cimaf and you dont have to worry about the loss of power through hydraulics, hahaha, i bet robbie will like that.

 

[cbturf]

Where are you working? When I demoed the Supertrak 300 I sent it to Coronodo NM where it had another demo. I met the guy I sent it to on a site visit a couple of weeks ago and he also sent the Supertrak on it's way. He runs a B425 and cuts huge pine all day every day and only kept the Supertrak a day, I only ran it about 6 hours before I knew it was not for me (see Monster showed up today thread). Fecon's flagship mulcher is the FTX-440 and it is direct drive hooked up to a 13L 440 horse Caterpillar. The B160 you looked at, which head was on it? (((Let the discussion roll you will not offend me, after all I have one of each)))

 

[SSP&M]

I am in south GA.The head the B160 had was an fae i think but i may be wrong will have to go look at the price sheet, it was the only pto mower that would roll back and keep the gearbox/pto shaft inline. so it would lift up and down like a tractor and then roll foward and backwards.

I havent run the SK300, but i ran a SK200 and wasnt inpressed with it. Like you said it was very slow and the cutting wasnt great, but since then they turned the hyd. up on it to i think 5500psi and then came out with the 300.
I did like the cab and comfort of the machine and that is what i am looking for now. Skid steers are NOT comfortable to put 10 hours a day in and very hard to seal out dust.
There is a guy down here that has a SK200 and a Bron 400. I think he has problems with both of them just like the rest of us.

 

[cbturf]

HOLY COW you mean you do not like dust. Even with the pressurized cab on the FTX-140 the dust in the cab is brutal out there in NM. Comfort is productivity, I love the cabs on the Kodiak and the FTX-148.

The Kodiak you ran had a Loftness head. I had to have a gearbox added to change the RPM from 540 to 2000. It was designed for a tractor and is having some problems holding up under the higher horsepower and Kodiak is changing all of them out.

Mulching is very hard on the equipment and you spend a lot of time working on them, I bet if you took my 140 apart and threw it in a box I could reassemble it with a blindfold. Dedicated is the way to go they are usually easier to work on (other than Rayco machines) and do not seem to have the fire issues as skid steer machines do.

 

[mouse]

what skidsteer fire issues do you refer to?

 

[yellowdogsvc]

what skidsteer fire issues do you refer to?

Cat c series fire issues probably. Without a mulching debris kit,the C series machines pull alot of debris into the motor compartment where the particles can contact the turbo, muffler, motor, etc.