Adding rubber scrapers to augers???

[mcj115]

General open question. I see adding rubber scrapers/paddles to the augers of snowblowers to fill the gap with the housing seems VERY common across brands and sizes (mainly small to mid-sized blowers) to increase performance. If this universally works well why don't the manufacturers add these from the factory. There must be some reason why all brands don't add these, as I am sure they all would like an edge.


What is the negative to adding these scrapers that the manufacturers don't add them?

 

[leonz]

Do you really mean the impeller paddles??

It's money and only money and they have cash cows with snow casters the way they make them now.
Open cross augers cost less to make and and don't do much as the mule is pushing the snow into the
cross auger housing.

The BCS, Berta, and Yamaha snow casters are made with heavy cross auger flighting with serrations that tear up the snow as it enters the cross auger housing to make it easier to feed snow to the impeller at a higher rate per minute. It negates the need for rubber wipers like clarence.s impeller kits as they made with close fitting impeller housings with very small gaps between the impeller paddle edge and the impeller housing.



More than a handful of walk behinds try to accomplish more by using inexpensive sheet metal to create the auger flighting(insert finger down throat here).

They major builders like RAD and the other major american firm MTD that build many lines of machines seem to have no desire or interest to improve them by simply making a solid cross auger with narrow flighting with serrated cutting edges that is very short in height to solve 99% of the issues by breaking up the snow as it is pushed into the housing by a front mount or rear mount snow caster. MEH, but what do I know?, I have only been using snow casters and plows since 1966.

If more snow casters were made with rotating impeller drums they would plug less and throw snow farther where space permits.

Better yet if some one made a single stage snow caster was made for front or rear mount systems they would sell many of them, provided they built them the way they were made by the International Harvester Company design from 1967 with a belt driven right angle bevel gear drive that in turn used a cross shaft to an external chain drive one to one sprocket to sprocket that would rotate the solid cross auger at a high rate of speed they would sell many of them and be 3 years behind in orders every year, but what do I know.


There is a company in Finland that makes UTV/RTV/4 wheeler-quad bike motorized snow casters and the single stage model is very good at cutting snow and is very efficient.


The big mistake that Fair Manufacturing made was making the single stage unit that they tried to sell an end discharge unit like a tow behind flail chopper harvester and that doomed it from being sold commercially.

 

[FatTire]

I'm not one to argue with the idea that a single-stage unit is a viable tool. But I'm buying a 2 stage 3 point unit, so nothing against those either....

 

[Dave M7040]

General open question. I see adding rubber scrapers/paddles to the augers of snowblowers to fill the gap with the housing seems VERY common across brands and sizes (mainly small to mid-sized blowers) to increase performance. If this universally works well why don't the manufacturers add these from the factory. There must be some reason why all brands don't add these, as I am sure they all would like an edge.


What is the negative to adding these scrapers that the manufacturers don't add them?

mcj
First you need to decide what performance means to you because often it has a different meaning to others which you may have overlooked.

If throwing distance is your "performance," requirement, then messing around with add on's is not the way to the best distance.

Think Rotating drum style blowers like the one in the brochure below. Th drum surrounding the fan is rotated a bit with a hydraulic motor exposing the nozzle of the drum.

When you are discharging through the nozzle, the snow comes straight off the fan by passing the chute. No friction at all and serious distance. Airports use them to clear wide runways. Railroads use them. Large commercial snow removal companies use them

Gravely walk behind machines have a blower attachment called a Snow Cannon. A bit different design than the rotating drum, but very similar. As you direct the snow to blow to one side or the other the entire drum and chute rotate as a unit.

I blow long trails through my farm with an inverted blower behind a M7040. I want to travel fast because I am going a long distance. I am traveling in high range second gear at 10 to 11 kilometers per hour. The performance that is important to me is the throughput . of the fan. The augers are completely buried in the snow, the entire blower housing is like a big cup pulling the snow towards the fan. My forward speed is limited by how much snow the fan can move.

Think of snow blowing like throwing a baseball. The further you want to throw it the more energy you use up. Throw 10 balls as far as you can and, if your me, you are out of breath.
Throw the same 10 balls half as far and I am not breathing hard.

Your engine is the same. You can use up its power in a quest for distance. In the end you will take longer to do the snow removal job.

Manufacturers know this engineering fact of life. If you don't have HST and have a rear 3 pt blower, often your biggest challenge is that your tractor backs up into the snow faster than the blower will get rid of it.

I hope this material gives you a different slant on how to view performance. Ask any questions as I will be happy to explain further.

Dave M7040

 

[Rustyiron]

Dave, is that a (fan) speed increasing gearbox @ the PTO shaft? (in the literature pic)

 

[Dave M7040]

Dave, is that a (fan) speed increasing gearbox @ the PTO shaft? (in the literature pic)

No speed reducing gearbox.

The entire product line of that big company's blowers' fans run 540 rpm
Some more powerful tractors have 1,000 rpm pto's because the pto shaft can be lighter while transmitting the same power.
At the blower the speed is lowered to 540

Dave M7040

 

[Rustyiron]

That's surprising, I had thought that a higher impeller speed would be an advantage. I'm new to blowers, but learning

 

[Dave M7040]

Great to be learning with an open mind. A few come along and it is don't confuse me with the science..

The more important and always overlooked feature when someone is buying a blower is the height of the tractor's pto above ground level compared to the fan shaft height above the ground which is to say the fan diameter.

You are striving for a horizontal pto shaft between the tractor and blower.
As the pto u joint angles increase, the life of the pto assembly is greatly shortened.

This illustration shows a pto joint angle of 5 degrees has a life of 450 hrs.
Increase the joint angle to 25 degrees and you have a life of 20 hours.

It is not impeller speed, i.e. rotation, I assume you mean, that is an advantage.

Having a higher design speed for a blower fan, i.e. almost double from 540 to 1,000 rpm make things like balancing much more critical.

The advantage is to have the best combination of fan width and diameter to move the maximum amount of snow from point A where it fell to point B which is where you want to put it.

The size, style and other parameters of the auger, also fit into the equation to achieve the best throughput.

Dave M7040

 

[PILOON]

Snow casters are not a precision piece of equipment.
The tolerances are to the closest 1/4 inch vs the closest 1/0000.
To design and fabricate as suggested would almost double the costs and as well not to forget one ingested stone would throw everything out of kilter.
I have seen more than a few casters that needed the fan chamber totally re lined as the metal was virtually destroyed by ingested stones.

My CUT has 3 speed PTO and I have used all 3 speeds.
540 is pathetic, 1000 shakes like will self destruct while the 700 ish works just great.
I resort to the 540 when I blow heavy compacted windrows but use the 700 ish for fresh snow.
I next intend to add rubber paddles to the fan blades and expect that this will eliminate wedging small stones between my fan chamber and the blades.
It is those 3/4" wedged stones that sheer my bolts!

 

[adventure bob]

I have a JD single stage blower on the front of small garden tractor. I bolted mudflap pieces to the center auger paddles and it made a very observable difference in throwing distance. You have to make sure of two things when you do this type of mod, especially on a single stage due to auger speed: balance and contact. Get em wrong and it will vibe like a paint shaker.
Heres a site with he mod How to Install Rubber paddles on a 46 " John Deere Snow Blower - YouTube