Circle mill power

[bandmiller2]

I've mentioned this before but we have new brothers. Unless you have a heavy three phase service a diesel is the most practical power. Refurbishing and repowering is very common for fire trucks. Older Detroit diesels don't meet current EPA emissions and are replaced. Most of the pulled engines have a lot of life left, many less than 100,000,and were well maintained. Ask your local fire chief who does this work in your area. Most of the time you can get a good engine for not much more than scrap value. Most truck engines have a limiting speed governor, if the high speed is set down to say 1800 rpm it will hold that under load,  Pa. Bert tested this and it works. Farm tractors dozers and shovels use variable speed governors and will hold the speed the throttle is set. A good governor is very important to milling. Frank C.

[Possum Creek]

A sawmill without a working governor makes for a long day or a short day if you get mad and quit.             PC

[ddcuning]

Frank, in my case a generator made an excellent choice for acquiring an engine. The engines are already mounted with radiators on a steel base and just need to convert over to PTO. The drawback is that you need to rewire the engine but on a diesel, that isn't that difficult. The issue with a generator is that sometimes they don't have variable speed governors. You have to be absolutely positive that the governor is variable speed prior to buying a generator as a source for an engine. I went through the folks at Woodward to be sure mine was variable speed prior to setting up my mill. Replacing a governor to variable speed can be expensive. In my case, had I needed to replace the governor, it would have cost more than what I had in the engine.

Dave C

[johnny12]

A sawmill without a working governor makes for a long day or a short day if you get mad and quit.             PC

I totally agree with this. I try and hang in there and not get mad. 

[bandmiller2]

Dave, your right about generator diesels making good mill engines, of course if their big enough and operational you can run the mill and all auxiliaries with electric. Luckily most gen sets run at 1800 RPM as its a syncrenous speed for 60 hz some of the big units run 900 rpm, didly little gens run 3600.Your Woodward is about as good as it gets for speed control, much more sensitive than a mill needs. My best mill diesel was a cat. 318 out of an old Bucyrus shovel it was a complete unit clutch and all. Frank C.

[ddcuning]

Frank, you are correct. The gen that I converted was an 1800rpm so then engine was 2200 rpm max. Perfect for a mill. I would say you need a 75-100kw unit if you are getting the engine alone as I did. If you are going to set up and use it as electric, it would need to be much larger. Using as electric you start having to worry about in rush on the large motors that would power a mill. Also, if you get a gen to use as electric, you have to pay close attention to how the alternator is wired. Large motors are going to be 480V and the alternator needs to support that. If you get a 12 wire alternator, it will support most common voltages. My gen had only a 4 wire alternator set up as 240V 3 phase so that did me no good and being a 4 wire I could not reconfigure to another voltage. So, I took the alternator off and scrapped it in favor of a PTO.

Dave C

[Bert]

There are a number of mills in my area and most are running detroits for power. 3-71's 4-71's and 6-71's. I'm in a several year process of setting up a forestall automatic mill with a Cat D334 genset to run the 125 hp headsaw and 75hp hydraulic motors. It doesn't get much attention with being busy all the time, but I'm hopeful one day we can work all the bugs out. I know of another mill with a 12v71 genset for power. It runs wide open all day, everyday. The generator room is dripping with oil. Kind of scary to be in there.

[Dave Shepard]

bert, I'd like to hear more about your Forestall mill. My grandfather was a co-founder of Forestall.

[Bert]

Not sure what to say really. We bought the mill when another mill switched to band. Its pretty much intact but needs some TLC. Its a 4 head block mill and all hydraulic. When I say its heavy duty I mean its heavy duty. Everything is solid steel and thick. Moving it into place took a Caterpillar 988 loader and 2 excavators. The power pack for the hydraulics sets adjacent to the mill and I need roughly a zillion feet of hydraulic hose to hook everything back up. The controls are here but not hooked up and I suspect its going to take quite a bit of hydraulic troubleshooting to get this working half way right. My primary concern is getting the genset up to power the mill but even there the costs are high with the wiring and motor starters. I suspect once the blade spins i'll be a whole lot more motivated on the rest of it. The setworks were Mass but really have no idea how that works and i'll be looking to modernize this a bit once running. If I can just run in manual mode i'll be happy really. Jeff offered a few years ago to provide his knowledge of the beast, but to this point I have not pursued getting this running. Once I do, I will most likely need more support than just local. I'll take some pics as soon as it warms up a few degrees.