Hydraulic or mechanical feed PTO wood chippers?

murphy1244 · Aug 25, 2012

LouieJunior said:
I don't see a model BXM-42. What does the M stand for?

Shredder.

Agent Blue · Aug 26, 2012

I guess I have not kept up on the chipper options. When I bought one it was gravity or hydraulic. I can see where a belt drive system would give you grief in the fact of plugging up or not being able to reverse the intake. Not even viewing one I don't think it would be a great choice unless it came with a complete system one could easily add a hydraulic motor and control on to make it fully functional. Gong from gravity to hydraulic I could see a grand in parts and some chute mods... which is still cheaper than the 4k initial purchase price. I guess quality is still controlled by price.
Good luck with your purchase decision !

DavisHollow · Apr 30, 2013

Here's me using my mechanical feed chipper for 2 hours 5 minutes. Huge mistake not buying hydraulic feed. The difference has nothing to do with reliability or anything else I've seen in this thread, the difference is the hydraulic feed (as best I can tell) all have two rollers, which feeds cedar branches 5 times better than a single roller against the chute. With single roller, I have to baby-sit everything I put it or it won't feed.

Cedar Chipping - YouTube (I may supersede this with a better version in the works...)

Anyone know if I can convert my chipper to hydraulic? If nothing else, to a dual feed roller mechanical. I would pay $1000 to get this thing upgraded. The chipper part is way overpowered for the feeder, at least when 90% of what I put in is cedar slash. I know it's not a shredder, but cedar slash is 70% thin branches and I would prefer to just throw it all into one machine.

As for reliability, I haven't had any issues yet with the mechanical feed mechanism. Honestly there are more moving parts to a hydraulic feed system. Only problems I've had are clogging (because I was running way under 540 rpm, don't do that any more), and the feed roller bushing came loose and I had to squeeze it back into place and retighten, took 3 hours over a week to figure it out and fix it. Just an allen wrench and some ratchet straps to squeeze things in place.

Bottom line, this thing feeds too slow, I could get twice as much done in a day if I switched to dual-roller preferably hydraulic feed.

DavisHollow · Apr 30, 2013

Sorry, I cleaned up video a little and reposted -- An Old Man and his Saturday - YouTube

More info. My only other experience with a chipper is I rented a Vemeer chipper once, 25HP gas. It drank gas but it had hydraulic feed and once you got something started it ate it. So while its feeding itself I can drag over the next branches to throw in. It was way faster.

I also think the main issue with the single roller solution is just the under-side friction from the chute. Its like the difference between 2-wheel drive and 4-wheel drive. I think a mechanical feed would work almost as good as hydraulic feed if there were to rollers, one driven and the other free-rotating. Most of the time I get 3-4 1" branches under the roller and they just sit there not feeding.

I'll get a video of the feed not working well, next time out. The wood just drags on the chute and the feed roller chews up the wood.

I also think if I fed dry cedar it would feed a lot better. The freshly cut cedar is very soft.