Convert Gas Powered Chipper To PTO?

   / Convert Gas Powered Chipper To PTO? #12  
Is it weight and robustness, or is there something else?
If it's designed to run at 3600 and you slow it to 540, it's going to be as slow as watching grass grow, to chip something. Also I bet you it will plug easily and be a total pain to use.

Speed it up and MAYBE all the extra hp will cause it to break because it wasn't designed for that much hp.

SR
 
   / Convert Gas Powered Chipper To PTO?
  • Thread Starter
#13  
Ok, you all have convinced me that my time would be better spend on other projects! :laughing:
 
   / Convert Gas Powered Chipper To PTO? #14  
chipper.jpg

Few years ago I spent a few weeks and actually converted one. The rotational speed isn't a huge deal, additional bearing and a big pulley can get you to 3000rpm (I don't think I ever made it up to 3600rpm though). Real problem is rotational direction.

On mine, the engine turned in the opposite way the PTO shaft does. I did not notice this until way late in the conversion. No easy fix for that. I had to pull out the flywheel and machine new mounts for the chipper blade to face the opposite direction.

In the end, it was all a complete failure though. Didn't chip right, really violent and wanted to eject sticks back out at you. Possibly my attempt to reverse the direction failed, possibly I didn't have enough speed. Or all of the above.

So it got stripped for parts and sent to the scrap yard.
 
   / Convert Gas Powered Chipper To PTO? #15  
Yes, direction is a very important factor as well. The geometry would be all wrong with the flywheel spinning backwards even with the cutters reversed. Both chutes are angled to self feed with assistance of the cutting action. Perhaps if you moved the rear chute to the other side of the flywheel it would have worked out, but then the chip ejection out the bottom may be biased as well. Looks like very nice work otherwise. Does the shaft with the large pulley go all the way through to the back of the chipper? If not that is a lot of stress on the bearing and shaft.
 
   / Convert Gas Powered Chipper To PTO? #16  
I had this 8" chipper for a while and it did an excellent job of chipping!
It had an 18 hp engine and the flywheel weighted 195 lbs but it turned about 1500 rpm IIRC. It used pulleys to slow down rpm.
The work was done by the flywheel. You got it reved up and the flywheel had the energy to chip.
You would need to check what rpm the original flywheel shaft ran and adjust to that.
I doubt if it was 3600 rpm. ???
To reverse direction use a jack-shaft and turn the unit 180* to the tractor.
 

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   / Convert Gas Powered Chipper To PTO? #17  
The assumption was that OP intended to replace the engine output shaft with a PTO shaft. If there are different size pulleys on the existing engine and chipper flywheel, then that should be taken into account when determining the chipper RPMs. I would think in an effort to make the chipper cheap and light the OEM would use a smaller, lighter flywheel and spin it faster to try to store more energy and keep the blade/tooth speed up versus a larger diameter flywheel.
 
   / Convert Gas Powered Chipper To PTO? #18  
Yeh these little chippers were way cheaper than that nice machine. Flywheel in them was maybe 40lbs at most. Direct drive off the gas engine, nothing to change the speed. Figure the gas engine maybe doing 3200rpm at full throttle, give or take.

As for my PTO conversion, the big pulley rode on a fixed bearing that was mounted to an adjustable plate. The plate moved up/down to set the belt tension. The shaft was just a stub shaft, it didn't pass through the machine. No doubt this is crummy design, but there was no room to pass the shaft through, it would have interfered with the flywheel. Kind of a "it's this or nothing" situation when doing a conversion.

Hadn't considered the chute angle being wrong, probably a big reason it failed. Trying to fix that wouldn't even make sense given the time/cost.
 

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