Converting this Huskee 22 ton log splitter to electric

[LD1]

I appreciate the info that the motor I linked to was not really a genuine 5hp motor. But what I didn't understand is why you never said it would be "good enough" since you said you used a 3 hp motor, and the motor I linked to could reliably only supply around 3 hp.

The reason I never said it was good enough is because I am saying that my 3hp really isnt good enough either. I would much rather use a 5hp motor. But I didnt have one. You see, my former company that closed the doors let me have (for free) all of the electric motors under 20HP. So I have about 40 of em. But only 3 of them were 5's and they were 1750 rpm's. But I have 4 or 5 of the 3hp/3600rpm motors. So I used what I had, cause it was free. If I was going out spending money to put this together, I would do it right. And also, that compressor motor you linked was an open motor. Too easy to get crap where it isnt supposed to be. TEFC is the way to go on a splitter.

IConsidering the intermittent loading in this application, and if he puts a micro switch and a contactor on it, it would not even be running 100% of the time, wouldn't this motor serve the desired purpose?

I also am thinking anyone on here who builds their own stuff, is not going to run the ram to the end of it's stroke and hold it till the motor burns up, or actually hold it into a piece of wood very long if it's not making any progress. Just trying to balance theory with real world practice and of course cost plays a big part.

I understand the balancing of theory and real world. The idea behind running the ram to the end to see what the amp draw is, was to see what it requires for the pump to make max pressure. Because while actually splitting wood, unless you have an amp meter or pressure gauge that you watch constantly, there is no way to know what you are actually doing. The the idea is to size a motor large enough to cover full pressure.

Even if it is only once in a blue moon that you spike the pressure/amps, it is doing permanent and non-reversible damage to the motor that will eventually burn it up.

And while things are working on my 3 hp currently. The 3hp 8 amp rated with 1.15SF is actually capable of more power than the 15A 5HP 1.0SF motor you listed. Converting it to power(watts, or VA) @230v, the motor you listed is 3450. My 8A 3 phase is slightly over 3800 accounting for the SF. And the fact that it actually took 11A to open the relief, thats a power of ~4500. Converting that back to a useful 230v singe phase number and you get 19.8A of power required.

All this means is: My 3hp is undersized and will fail sooner than a 5hp motor would. How much sooner I dont know. But the motor is/was free and I plan on finding out. The 5HP SPL compressor motor you linked, same story. It is undersized. (and open housing). Given it is undersized a bit more, and open, thats just all the sooner it will fail.

 

[franklin2]

On cost of the project, I had an old riding lawn mower and a 4 x 24 cylinder driven splitter I designed and built.....wedge/knife took 4 iterations before I got it where it really worked well. I had the engine, the frame, wheels to roll it about, and the splitter. Geez all I had to do was to get a pump and hook it up to the engine. Walk in the park. Yeah right!

Well, about $500 later I got what I wanted. Things just kept coming op that were required. However, I have a slick unit now that does what I want, don't have to get the tractor out to run it, runs unloaded 7 sec. out, 6 back and sits at ground level.

Not that anybody is interested since this is an electrically driven question, but I do have some pics. Just a little effort to get the chip out of the camera and work through the posting process.

Mark

I know what you mean. I know there are lots of splitter build threads on here, but after I built mine I came to the conclusion it's very hard to build one cheaper than buying one of the ones at the store when they are on sale for around $1000-$1200. I like mine also, but like your build, it wasn't as easy as I thought to get it right.

 

[jtcweb]

I am considering doing the exact same thing, did you ever do the conversion and if so what electric motor did you go with?

 

[franklin2]

Just so happens, I was researching this subject again, and came across this old thread. I just bought a 5 hp 240v electric motor off ebay for $179.00 to convert my log splitter over. I got so frustrated trying to get it started during this cold snap, I said enough, it's going electric.

After doing some research, looking at the 10hp Briggs engine I had it turns CCW facing the shaft. This motor I bought claimed to be CCW facing the shaft, should work. But when I got the motor, even though they advertised it as "non-reversible" they had a wiring diagram were you could wire it CW. Good thing, I wired it CCW and it sounded terrible. Come to find when I wired it CCW it was running CW. So I wired it CW and it turned the correct CCW direction.

Like I said, I had a 10 hp briggs engine on it. This 5 hp motor has plenty of power. It will stall if you hold the lever till the cylinder dead-heads, but the gas motor would stall in the same situation also. I do notice that when it starts splitting the wood, it does it with much more authority than the gas engine. With the gas engine, even though you have it revved wide open, it's still just loafing with the carb half shut. When it gets a load on it the governor has to react and open the carb up. This gives you a split second hesitation. You don't have this with the electric motor, it's all there all the time, and goes through noticeably quicker than the gas engine.

There is still the question of longevity of the cheap electric motor. I will try to come back later to give any updates on that.

 

[LD1]

Just so happens, I was researching this subject again, and came across this old thread. I just bought a 5 hp 240v electric motor off ebay for $179.00 to convert my log splitter over. I got so frustrated trying to get it started during this cold snap, I said enough, it's going electric.

After doing some research, looking at the 10hp Briggs engine I had it turns CCW facing the shaft. This motor I bought claimed to be CCW facing the shaft, should work. But when I got the motor, even though they advertised it as "non-reversible" they had a wiring diagram were you could wire it CW. Good thing, I wired it CCW and it sounded terrible. Come to find when I wired it CCW it was running CW. So I wired it CW and it turned the correct CCW direction.

Like I said, I had a 10 hp briggs engine on it. This 5 hp motor has plenty of power. It will stall if you hold the lever till the cylinder dead-heads, but the gas motor would stall in the same situation also. I do notice that when it starts splitting the wood, it does it with much more authority than the gas engine. With the gas engine, even though you have it revved wide open, it's still just loafing with the carb half shut. When it gets a load on it the governor has to react and open the carb up. This gives you a split second hesitation. You don't have this with the electric motor, it's all there all the time, and goes through noticeably quicker than the gas engine.

There is still the question of longevity of the cheap electric motor. I will try to come back later to give any updates on that.

Glad you got it running and wired correctly rotation wise

Gotta ask though....what's the FLA on the nameplate. It's odd to me that the motor is stalling rather than open the pressure relief valve. That indicates not enough power. Most electric motors won't stall until 2x their amp rating or better. Which is no where you want to be near.

What's the GPM of your splitter pump also?

Do you have an amp clamp you could hang on the thing and monitor while splitting and see what it hovers around?

 

[franklin2]

Glad you got it running and wired correctly rotation wise

Gotta ask though....what's the FLA on the nameplate. It's odd to me that the motor is stalling rather than open the pressure relief valve. That indicates not enough power. Most electric motors won't stall until 2x their amp rating or better. Which is no where you want to be near.

What's the GPM of your splitter pump also?

Do you have an amp clamp you could hang on the thing and monitor while splitting and see what it hovers around?

I am using the larger 11 gpm pump from the surplus center. I figured I had the larger hp engine, might was well get the larger pump. I also bought the Prince log splitter valve from them. But I have always had minor problems with this valve. When the oil is cold, the handle won't stay locked in the backward position when retracting, I have to hold it. And then as it warms up, it will start working but sometimes it will struggle to automatically click off. So I have been hesitant to adjust it, since it seems to go from one extreme to the other. That's when the gas motor would try to stall, and the 5 hp electric motor tries to stall, when the cylinder comes back and dead heads, and the Prince valve will not click off properly. It's a intermittent thing, I just live with it.

Here is the motor I purchased. It says FLA is 22 but I seem to remember the nameplate saying 20 amps at 240v.

EMZ 5HP 230V 3450 RPM 7/8in Shaft Diameter Compressor Duty Electric Motor for sale online | eBay

Find many great new & used options and get the best deals for EMZ 5HP 230V 3450 RPM 7/8in Shaft Diameter Compressor Duty Electric Motor at the best online prices at eBay! Free shipping for many products!

www.ebay.com

I went to tractor supply and got a "L" lovejoy half for a 5/8 shaft, the briggs had a 1 inch shaft. And I also bought a new rubber spider from TSC.

I had bought this mount for the pump from surplus center. 4F17 4-Bolt Aluminum Pump Foot Mount Hydra-Mount Corp FM-38-4F | Hydra-Mount | Brands | www.surpluscenter.com

To make it work with the 10hp briggs I had to make a very thick metal block to boost the height so it would line up with the shaft of the engine. When I got the 5hp electric motor, I found I needed to take the block I made out and bolt this foot mount directly to my plate, and then I needed a couple of washers under the 5hp motor to make it line up with the pump.

 

[franklin2]

P.S. I do have a amp clamp and can check that. I will probably use it this weekend. I also need to buy or scrounge some sort of switch for it. Right now just for proof of concept I just plug it directly into the plug my welder plugs into. But I can tell from the plug prongs this is hard on the plug. I might have a small disconnect laying around I could use, but I need to keep the weather out of it, this thing is stored outside.

 

[franklin2]

Used the splitter today. Split a couple of loads with it. Wired up a disconnect/knife switch yesterday so I can cut it on and off.

Put the amp clamp on the motor. When I first started the motor, the amps were about 20. The oil was thick and cold. But as it ran, and the oil warmed up, idling the amps were 5. Normal motion of the splitter with no load was also about 5 amps. The amount of amp draw was directly related to the load the wood presented to the splitter. Most wood that easily split would make the amp clamp jump anywhere from 10 to 15 amps. Occasionally a piece of wood would jump to 20 amps. And then you would occasionally run into a piece that was difficult to split. This would make the amp clamp meter jump to 30 amps.

All of these readings from 10 amps to 30 amps are instantaneous spikes in the amp draw when the splitter would initially strike the face of the wood. After the intial amp spike, the amps would return to 5 as it moved through the piece of wood. On a couple of pieces, the splitter would not enter the wood, but would try to stall the motor. This would make the amps jump to 60. On these few pieces I would just re-position them and try again and it would go ahead and go through. Holding the lever too long and dead heading the cylinder would also make the ammeter spike to 60 amps and the motor would try to stall. It never actually stops, but it's turning very slow and not making happy noises. But this only lasts a second or two, it's easy to hear it and move the lever back to center to get rid of the problem.

I held my hand on the motor about half-way through splitting the wood. It was warm to the touch but I could easily hold my hand on it without any discomfort. At the end of the splitting session the motor was hotter, I could hold my hand on it for a short period of time, but I could not keep my hand on the output shaft end of the motor, it was too hot to touch for more than a few seconds.