My processor build

[stevea303]

Yes I use 100% of the stroke of the Cylinder, It took several mock ups to get it But I *DanG near think it's perfect

[hedgerow]

Hedgerow,
I have that same 1/4" needle valve inline just before my cylinder so i can easily adjust feed rate also, however i have a small 1" cylinder with 1/2" rod/6" stroke for the saw feed. My adjustment is veryyyyy sensitive.
I actually used a sequence valve into a priority valve that splits 2 gal to feed cyl and 21-22 to saw motor. The adjustment on the priority valve is the one that is extremely sensitive. Im talkin 1/20th of a turn and it goes from barely moving to trying to chop the log like its an axe.

Steve on mind I run a 1 1/2 inch 3/4 inch rod  16 inch stroke cylinder and I played with the arm length on the saw for a while. I don't like priority valves as over the years I have seen a lot of trouble with them. You want all the oil you can get to that saw motor. I would run the saw motor on one pump have another for the conveyor, clamp, saw cylinder wedge and a third pump for the splitter. I would turn the saw cylinder over before I got too far into this to keep the saw dust out of the rod end of the cylinder I ruined the first cylinder I had that way next one I turned over to keep the saw dust out. In your picture I don't see the relief valve for the saw cylinder on mind I am running a spool valve to control the saw cylinder movement. I came out of the spool valve threw the flow control valve down to the relief valve and then into the extend port on the saw cylinder. The flow control is mostly a speed control the relief is what is going to control the down pressure on the saw bar. It gets a little tricky to get it right. You need to get some gauges installed on the system so you can see what psi the saw motor is running in the cut and what psi is on the down pressure on the saw cylinder. I can't remember what mine runs at.   

[blackfoot griz]

Blackfoot,
Funny you mention bigger cylinder, I just bought a 3" bore 6" stroke to try just that thinking more fluid to fill cylinder will slow things down a bit.

That should do the trick...the needle valve won't be quite as touchy as with the previous cylinder! I'm  just guessing that it will be about 3 times less touchy.😁 

[stevea303]

Saw cut with original 1" cylinder...
😴 💤

https://youtu.be/4keQvAx8fIU


I'm also swapping out the sprockets on the log infeed, that almost forces you to take a nap between cuts which I'm normally fine with but...

[doc henderson]

nice to see it cut wood

[stevea303]

Also changed my wedge design to a box wedge instead. I built a box wedge for my small towable splitter and it works so much nicer. Nice square 4x4 splits and even creates a nice pile of kindling to boot. Wood stacks nicer also.

 

 

   

[doc henderson]

I rarely use my multi wedge due to mulberry and elm being hard to push through.  I like your wedge, and might suggest to raise the back of the first wedge to leave more room under it and kick the upper part of the log up to the second wedge.  When do you plan to open up the plant to build these. lol .  you really crank out fab.  Your video was great and looks like you tuned down your 1" cylinder and made it work.  would be nice to be able to easily turn things up and down on the "fly".  I also try to make square or rectangle wood,  It stacks good and is easier to fully load the stove for overnight ect.  what is the slot in your bed for?

[stevea303]

Doc,
Both top plates are kicked up 1/4" in rear and each vertical plate is kicked out 1/4" in the rear from the previous plate to prevent binding. Center wedge is double bevel where as the rest are single bevel.

[doc henderson]

Sorry I did not see that in the pic.  thanks for sharing so much and letting us old guys live through you vicariously.  how did you slow the angular velocity generated by the small cylinder?  the saw seems to have plenty of power.  Looks fantastic!!!

[barbender]

Yep, nice to see it cut- now let's speed things up!😁

[stevea303]

I didn't change anything on the saw yet, my goal is to have it feed faster into the cut until it hits resistance then slow down to a proper cut speed without binding.

[doc henderson]

so if you bump up the flow to the cylinder, and then have a pressure bypass, that will offload pressure and allow adjustment.  Thanks for the video.

[stevea303]

Doc, If I'm understanding correctly how this valve (Grove Reducing & Relief Small Volume Regulator) works it will operate much like a pressure relief valve but not create the heat associated with typical relief valves. When a relief valve is constantly having to "relieve" itself I'm told that can build significant unwanted heat. It supposed to be delivered today so I will be hooking it up this weekend and giving it a test run.
Will post results.

[doc henderson]

sounds good, it seemed to go slow in the video so thought you had done something different already.  carry on!

[hedgerow]

Steve looking forward to see what this regulator is. When I built my saw I looked at a lot of different ways to control the speed and pressure on the bar using hyd. Didn't ever find anyone in the hyd world that could help me set up a manifold set up like Danzco uses on there saw to control it all. They are not selling that manifold if your not buying a saw and I understand he has spent a lot of time and money getting it to work. Yes pushing oil by a relief will cause some oil heating. On these saws the amount of oil at a low pressure you are pushing past the relief when you are cutting the log is so small I have never had a issue with heating the oil. If I was building this saw today I would control the movement of the bar with compress air instead of hyd. A air cylinder is easier to control and more forgiving. I just didn't want to add a air compressor to the processor when I was building it. I could have used the air to control the movement of the saw and used air to push the bar oil to the saw instead of using a 12 V pump.   

[blackfoot griz]

Steve, I'm going to throw you a curveball. You have a one lever control that controls the saw motor, clamp and saw cylinder. If you also have a readily accessable flow control for the saw cylinder (speed of cut control) I would suggest that the amount of pressure exerted on the bar is irrelevant to a degree with your configuration.

If you engage the  main control lever the clamp should be clamping and the chain should be spinning before the chain touches the log. If your cut speed is too fast, it will let you know!  Either the chain will slow down (audible) stop (obvious) or there will be an evident/ audible drag on the hydraulics. If the saw cylinder is extending too quickly, you would have two lines of defense to prevent a bent saw bar-- the main control lever in one hand and the flow control in the other.

Have you run a cut yet where the saw cylinder was extending too quickly? If so, what happened?

[doc henderson]

steve, the larger 3 inch cylinder would have 9 times the force since the surface area goes up by the square of the radius.  If you can regulate the speed of the smaller cylinder, the force will be limited by the size of the piston.  The force is further reduced by the torque arm that is about 1/4 or 1/5 the length of the bar, further reducing the effective force.  remember the torque arm is an artificial strait line drawn from pivot point to pivot point, not the actual steel you weld.  it changes as the bar rotates.  The way you have it, rotates faster in the beginning, and slower, but with more force in the cut. perfect.

[hedgerow]

Steve
Did you get the Grove valve installed? Any more up dates on the processor build?

[Randy88]

Nice build, I'm very impressed with the quality of your craftsmanship. 

I'm not telling anyone what to do, but your making things a whole lot more complicated than they need to be all by trying to eliminate a couple simple functions.     

I'd have recommended you bought the saw components yourself separately and put it together yourself and run each function with its own valve, had a pressure gauge on each valve and knew what each function was doing at all times, and would end up being far faster and cheaper than the way your going to do things.

I run a roller clamp setup, so that pressure needs to be independent of the saw and bar function.   

I run a separate valve for the bar down feed with its own pressure gauge so I know what force is being exerted on the bar, have two needle valves on it, one for down speed and the other for up speed and can adjust them, but seldom do with the needle valves, I'd rather do it with the lever itself.   

I run a separate valve to control the saw motor and also have a gauge on that to know how close to stall we are running it, rather than rely on experience or feel to know, also have a pressure gauge on the motor return line to make sure we never have any back pressure on the saw motor ever.   The way your doing it if I recall correctly is the bar feed is controlled through the saw motor, so it senses the pressure spikes on the motor and slows the bar feed and vice versa to prevent the motor from stalling, sounds really simple and nice, but takes the human factor out of the equation, meaning it makes it hard to bump up the saw motor pressure, or the pressure on the bar feed by the use of the valve handle for a few logs or cuts as needed and if I recall also takes the bar lift pressure off, meaning if you were to stall the bar, you can't shut the motor off and use full force to lift the bar out of the cut, or if you pinch the bar, you can't monitor how much force your putting on it with the valve, same goes for the clamp, once its adjusted, its the same for each time it clamps.      

The way we do it is, for large logs, we use much lower pressure on the hold down and for smaller logs much more pressure, each time its done with the handle on the valve rather than preset, which saves a lot of issues with pinched bars or logs that move around on the last cut or two on each log.

I have everything separate and love it that way, its far faster than running the saw motor, bar feed and clamp all in one and is much easier to adjust each function on its own.

I monitor everything from the pressure gauges and can adjust things for each log just by looking at the gauges as I saw, so much nicer and simpler than those sequencing/priority valves. 
 

If it were me, I'd run the clamp off a separate valve and the bar feed and saw motor together now that you spent the money on the simple saw, I'd also install some gauges for each circuit to know whats going on and I'd really have to study the hydraulics again on that valve setup to remember how it worked, its been a few years since I looked at them, but I'd still want pressure monitoring on each function to know for sure what's going on, have the gauges all in a row and nice and handy to see and read and to monitor, but do as you wish.    

[jmur1]

stevea303, I would really like to see some updates on this machine!  Drumroll please......

How is it working out?

jmur1