PTO chipper WoodMaxx new MX-9900

[ultrarunner]

Spot on for species and type... lots of Nobles, but also Douglas Firs, Nordman and Fraser, Grand and rarely Silver Tips... none this year ;-(

Location is SF Bay Area...

The semi-retired guy with 12" chipper retired year before last... he would hire out with a helper and was reasonable... chipped Christmas Trees as fast as you could feed.

Went to Bandit to rent a chipper and liked what I heard... said any rental could be applied to a purchase... they had me all hitched up with a 12" and safety/operation instructed with my credit card on file... just as I was about to leave the manager came out and said he needed a copy of my Contractor License... I am not a contractor and was renting for personal use... after some discussion he said he could not rent to me and learned this was the same area wide... have to be a contractor or municipality...

Never had this issue in Olympia... even Home Depot/Lowes rents chippers and splitters

Brother jumped on the Woodmaxx and I cautioned it would be slow going... at least properly adjusting the knives made a big difference.

Any recommendation for a chipper for Christmas Trees... most are under 8' and most 5" dia or less... the larger 12-14' trees are about 1% of sales.

 

[ericm979]

Have you tried cutting off the lower foot or two of branches and feeding them separately?

 

[ultrarunner]

Not yet... will need to check with the boss on that.

I just get the from the field reports.

Good to know simply adjusting the knife clearance made a huge difference.

Not that long ago I was admiring a new 3 point chipper not from from Davenport...

 

[Tworude]

They won't sell to me because I live in Alaska and I was going to pay for shipping on the Chipper and their sawmill! Yet they have no problem shipping to Canada.

 

[ultrarunner]

Update with picture...

Had a chance to use the chipper today... in general it worked well... no bogging down of the L3800 and the chipper part worked well most of the time.

What did happen with larger branches... either on or separately fed is the tendency for them to wrap around the feed wheel...

It is still a leaning curve with more to learn.

I also had Mom there helping...

 

[ultrarunner]

PS... we still get a laugh from when the guys were first using the chipper.

That is when I posted about how it took 3 guys to chip... two to drag and feed and one to sit in the seat so the engine would not stop... but they did take turns sitting to be fair...

 

[ericm979]

I've yet to have anything wrap around the feed wheels on the 8H. OTOH a couple times I have had larger branches with stubs get wedged with the stub in the travel slot for the upper feed roller. Once I had to hack it apart through that slot before I could pull it back out. It's a known issue and the MX's design is different in that area. It doesn't happen often.

Is your MX's feed rate easily adjustable? On the 8H the feed speed control lever goes from 0-10 but all the speed change happens in a very narrow range at about 3.5 making it difficult to set. It's my one real problem with the unit (other than not being big enough, but a chipper's never big enough). I have a lower GPM valve on order.

 

[ultrarunner]

The bar adjusts the feed rate... did not play around with it as things were wrapping up when I got there after work...

The tree in the picture went right on through... no problems.

Some individual long branches from 12-14' Nobles are very supple... twice branches wrapped around the feed roller...

Maybe being so green and the species being a factor?

The unit sounds good and is well matched the L3800 from what I can tell.

The initial problem was greatly improved by resetting the clearance on the knives...

For a long time I had my sights set on a used Bandit 65 commercial unit... know a couple of tree guys that use them... mostly hired to take down a single tree in a city lot...

Of course the bigger machines are awesome...

 

[Glrret]

The only time I have ever had anything wrap around the feed roller is when I'm chopping up grape vines, and that's only if they get toward the outer edges of the feed roller. I've also noticed I have less of a chance of wrapping if I slow my feed rate down.

 

[ultrarunner]

All good tips for our learning curve...

The old homestead is already looking better and this is the first year the tree lot has been policed before New Years... weather cooperated in that we had 6 weeks of dry days... so no mud to deal with or rain keeping away tree shoppers.

Thinking about the 1650 trees sold plus the 30 donated to local shelters and the Food Bank event where those bringing canned goods got a picture with Santa... it was quite a nice holiday season... 99.9 of those out to bring home a holiday tree are in good spirits to begin with and I enjoyed the public interaction...

The only negative was parents letting their kids climb all over the restored 1949 Farmall Cub... but that is for a different thread...

 

[Mjriegs2]

How are everyone's mx-9900's holding up? Pulling the trigger on purchasing one this week. There is currently a 2 month build back log on them when I called for information the other day.

 

[Glrret]

How are everyone's mx-9900's holding up? Pulling the trigger on purchasing one this week. There is currently a 2 month build back log on them when I called for information the other day.

I love mine, getting ready to start cleaning up winter blow downs.

 

[Mjriegs2]

I love mine, getting ready to start cleaning up winter blow downs.

Glad to hear! looking forward to having one soon. Thanks!

 

[Mikejeakins]

Have you had any issues with it?

 

[sea2summit]

Got one four or five weeks ago now, at about 9 hrs on the tach. It is awesome! I wish it had too and bottom rollers as sometimes it chews threw layers of material slowing the process instead of just sucking it all in. I’ve feed many very large pieces through and the RPMs only drop if it’s several feed of the large material (think 7-8”+) but if you slow the feed rate it doesn’t care. I’ve been feeding it a lot of dry material so I think I need to turn the blades over pretty soon, starting to get a lot of fine chips instead of the chunks I was getting and really want for the compost pile. I will say that I was hoping for more chips out of all the stuff I had stockpiled...it chips into much smaller volume than you’d think

 

[Glrret]

Have you had any issues with it?

The only problem I've had with mine is when I first got it the pulley on the hydraulic feed pump went bad. Seems the shaft key and set screw was no tight and caused the pulley to come loose and eventually blew apart. I sent pictures to the company and they sent replacement parts to me priority mail overnight. I had it back up and running in no time. I've put about 80 hours on is sense with not problems. I've chipped a lot of material, maybe close to 50 ton. I really like the chipper, but I do wish it had a double in-feed roller system instead of just the single top roller. But I still think it is still the best chipper on the market for the price.

 

[Mjriegs2]

Thank you for the updates. Just put my order in today. I was told it is about a 2 month wait time at this point, so hopefully have it by early June.

 

[oosik]

Good grief. Only nine hours and you think it's time to rotate the blades. My Wallenstein BX62S is six years old. I thin my small pine stands every spring( 30 hours every spring ). It averages about 900 small ( 1" to 6" in diameter ) pines every spring.

So... that computes out to around 180 hours and about 5400 small pines. The original sides is still plenty sharp.

You must be chipping VERY dirty material OR you need to adjust your stationary blade.

 

[sea2summit]

Good grief. Only nine hours and you think it's time to rotate the blades. My Wallenstein BX62S is six years old. I thin my small pine stands every spring( 30 hours every spring ). It averages about 900 small ( 1" to 6" in diameter ) pines every spring.

So... that computes out to around 180 hours and about 5400 small pines. The original sides is still plenty sharp.

You must be chipping VERY dirty material OR you need to adjust your stationary blade.

Dirty and dry. A bunch of it was killed cedar that’s been sitting in a field for who knows how long, more than four years. I haven’t actually inspected the blades yet it’s just an assumption. I’ve chipped more than a few pine as well...they aren’t very taxing on the chipper/blades, in my very limited experience.

 

[ultrarunner]

No issues running behind the L3800.

Only glitch was our of the crate and that was fixed by adjusting the blades...