Opinons wanted Cimaf vs Rotary Cutter

[ROWmulcher]

My absolute worst jam ever was about 500' of nylon gill net with led line attached. I was running a asv 4810 with a seppi swing hammer head...... Ha ha I don't miss that AT ALL rotflmao... I had to wear goggles in the cab !!!! Looked like a raccoon everyday!! That was way before high flow and pressurized cabs, he'll that was before "guarding " lol it had fiberglass shrouds, ohhh you guys the memories..

 

[KW Land Works]

I found a squatter camp on 231 that had been vacated for a while.

Do you know who found the dead guy about a month back not too far from Pier Park?

 

[t320pilot]

Not sure who found him but it was a ASV rc100 machine in the news clip.

 

[KW Land Works]

Ha, I noticed the same thing. I thought it was New View out of Lynn Haven but I checked with his friend and it wasn't him. Must be a pile of those machines around here.

 

[cat 297c]

That's an interesting approach. A fella from Fecon called and mentioned you were a good source of knowledge. I've been wondering what different cutters would do for head vibration. Do you ever notice a change in operating vibes?

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I hit some logging rope yesterday. Made a big fuss but didn't do too much damage to the cutters.

KW sorry been busy, no vibration at all, just make sure when you use different teeth you, what u do to one side do to the other keep the teeth even. I the center of the drum I run 7 chippers in the center, then from there, I stagger the chippers a carbides. I have ran 11 chippers in the center then King Kong chippers with carbide embedded chips, then on the 4 standard carbides on the out side.

 

[yellowdogsvc]

Wow, talk about a day killer.

I hit a bunch of wildlife yesterday. Not too good for the habitat restoration effort. Anyone have any crazy animal stories?

I have mulched plenty of dead deer, hit a cat that had been recently buried (that was a mess with cat wrapped around my wheel). Owner had come out to tell me he forgot to tell me that he had buried his cat next to a stump he wanted me to mill down.. yuck.

I mowed a field once and evidently it was full of field mice. It was awful. I didn't meant to hit them but they were literally jumping in front of the rotary.

I'm careful with birds nests and try and avoid "live" wildlife as much as possible. Every once in a while I'll hit a snake in a wood pile but we've actually saved squirrels, porcupines, snakes, and tarantulas (which are very cool to have around). I rescued a deer recently but it wasn't in danger of getting hit by the machine so that doesn't count!

 

[KW Land Works]

I bet a rotten deer carcass would sink up the day.

Cat297 - What are your thoughts on the carbide embedded chippers?

 

[KW Land Works]

Not sure what we hit but it knocked out about 10 teeth. Perhaps Mike Tyson was hiding in a stack of logs. The majority might be sharpenable but the one below is out of service.



I called the folks at King Kong and the bear paw cutters were verified to be 75 each. I ordered some carbide stock to try some of my own ideas but for the mean time, we'll just run more Cimaf cutters.

In the interest of knowing what we had, I had a guy run it under a mass spectrometer and rockwell hardness tester. It came out to Rc 40 and was confirmed to be an alloy steel. Those spectral analyzers aren't ultra reliable for quantitative results so I didn't bother with writing down the numbers but it had a decent amount of chromium and trace of molybdenum and niobium, among other elements. It's naive of me to think that there's low hanging fruit following the Cimaf engineering team but that won't stop me. I'm going to cut out a slot to braze on some carbide and might try some other tool steels. They won't prevent the catastrophic failures as above but hopefully they'll reduce the frequency of sharpening. After a catastrophic failure, I'm hoping that I'll be able to replace the brazed on piece in the field w/o ever taking the cutter off of the machine.

I'm going to use the cutter pictured as my test mule and will try to fill the gaps with stainless filler. Although mass spectrometers don't detect small elements like carbon very well, they'll usually make a guess and I've been cautioned that it might have enough to make it a bear to weld. I'm expecting the stainless filler to dilute the carbon and reduce the tendency to crack. I'll post my results.

 

[KW Land Works]

Word on the street is the contractor at Wild Herron had a machine burn to the ground and their insurance isn't playing fair.

 

[t320pilot]

That's not good for them, hope nobody was hurt. With all this rain it must be flooded down there.