Woodland Mill vs. Woodmax chipper?

[MJZ]

I have 31hp at the pto. So, woodland Mills supports a 6 inch chipper. Woodmax 6, 8, or 9. 95 pct of chipping is fresh cut cedar. I like the woodmax 8800 but for some reason it has 2 blades. Bothe the woodmax 6 inch and 9 inch have 4 blades. Any thoughts on these 2 brands. Any experience or thoughts on 2 blades vs. 4?

 

[mikester]

Take a look at each unit in person. Ask for a demo on removing the shrouds and chute the clear the chipper when it gets plugged with chips. Make sure you are comfortable with it being field serviceable with minimal tools. Price out cutters.

I would pay attention to flywheel weight and hydraulic infeed as well as field serviceability.

 

[Oz_Kioti]

When I was considering my Woodland Mills 8" chipper, the only machine I had to compare it with was a chipper with similar capacity but with the infeed shute being low and parallel to the ground. (Woodmax ?)

For my needs, which was predominantly chipping olive tree prunings, the raised inlet shute of the Woodland Mills machine suited me much better. Also the fact that it's own self-contained hydraulic fluid supply was isolated from the tractors supply appealed to me. So I went with the Woodland Mills 8".

I see that the Woodland Mills machine now sports a straight-behind inlet chute (as opposed to mine with an offset shute) which would not suit me as well, but I'm sure you'd soon get used to either inlet angle configuration.

Mine also has four knives - two towards the outer perimeter and on opposite sides of the flywheel , and the other two offset 90 degrees mounted on the inner perimeter. This arrangement gives a nice even cutting action. The other real benefit is that the 540 rpm of the drive shaft is geared up to 1000 rpm of the flywheel via pulleys and four belts, so clogging of the outlet shute is a rarity.

My advice is to just check out the layout, ease of knife replacement, rpm of the flywheel, and practicality for YOUR situation.

 

[ericm979]

I have 31hp at the pto. So, woodland Mills supports a 6 inch chipper. Woodmax 6, 8, or 9. 95 pct of chipping is fresh cut cedar. I like the woodmax 8800 but for some reason it has 2 blades. Bothe the woodmax 6 inch and 9 inch have 4 blades. Any thoughts on these 2 brands. Any experience or thoughts on 2 blades vs. 4?

Many of the larger Woodmaxx units like have the rotor geared up via a belt drive. The rotor on my 8H runs at 1150 rpm vs 540.

Some of the Woodland Mills chippers have blades that cover half of the throat, and alternate them. So while there's four blades any one part of a branch only gets hit by two blades per rotor revolution. So it's functionally a two blade chipper, but with four blades to remove when it's time to sharpen them.

Chippers whose rotor turns 540 rpm often have four blades instead of two. With the material being fed in at a certain speed there needs to be a certain time between blades for the material to get fed in for the next blade but not so long that it just runs into the rotor. If the rotor is slower then more blades are needed.

The 540 rpm chippers have about half the inertia as a 1100 rpm chipper. Tough material will slow them down easier.

I like the horizontal chute on most of the Woodmaxx models. That lets me chip long heavy branches since I don't have to lift the entire branch up to get it into the chute. Just get one end in and then lift the other up to level. For smaller stuff it's less work than lifting up into a chute that's tipped up.

Having had one of each I much prefer a power feed chipper to a self feeding one. It's a lot safer to have the branches feed at a predictable rate. I think the adjustable feed rate is much more useful than a fixed feed rate if you have material of varied sizes.

 

[5030]

Keep in mind the Woodland Mills is Canadian. Consequently, there will be a substantial tariff on it... Woodmax, on the other hand is USA. Not sure about the tariff on it. Some Woodmax stuff is made here, some is Chinese.

 

[MJZ]

So much good info. I will build a table. Here's a couple features I need. Automatic, not gravity fed. Horizontal in feed. My stuff is 1 to 7 inch cedars. Ive rented vermeer chippers for a total of 8 weeks over the last few years. I've been looking for used but I'm looking at 10 to 15 thousand vs. 3 to 7000

 

[MJZ]

For the record, I posted at 130am cuz I was up watching wild fire burn 1/2 mile from us. We are dead center in this mess.

 

[MJZ]

Take a look at each unit in person. Ask for a demo on removing the shrouds and chute the clear the chipper when it gets plugged with chips. Make sure you are comfortable with it being field serviceable with minimal tools. Price out cutters.

I would pay attention to flywheel weight and hydraulic infeed as well as field serviceability.

Great point in minimal tools. First time I clogged the vermeer it shut me down for the day. I needed a couple wrenches is all but was an hour away from the right tools. Lesson learned.

 

[Runner]

Great point in minimal tools. First time I clogged the vermeer it shut me down for the day. I needed a couple wrenches is all but was an hour away from the right tools. Lesson learned.

I carry a couple of old wrenches of the correct sizes in the owner's manual tube on my chipper.

 

[Tinhack]

Keep in mind the Woodland Mills is Canadian. Consequently, there will be a substantial tariff on it... Woodmax, on the other hand is USA. Not sure about the tariff on it. Some Woodmax stuff is made here, some is Chinese.

View the Woodland Mills site. Not only are no tariffs indicated, but
they also have a sale going on with free shipping. I just ordered a maintenance kit, trailer hitch and chainsaw holder a couple of weeks ago for my WC-68. All with free shipping. It was shipped out of Washington state. They must have a stocking warehouse there to get around the tariffs. They are not an order and build company like some.

I see they now have 8x10 pro model. Might be useful to someone that does a lot of chipping.