Felt Diesel Dripper Added to Woodmizer

[jpassardi]

Added a Cooks felt diesel dripper to my LT15 on the idle wheel side.
So far I highly recommend it - made a huge difference in milling pine - 1 drip/second keeps the blade spotless.



Note: I fabbed the bracket to use the existing setscrew adjuster for the adjustable guide.



Ignore the old clear plastic line. I did replumb in the auto engaged ball valve I made which is driven by the clutch/throttle lever to open/close.

[tacks Y]

Looks good. I made one for my Baker and have felt on both sides of the blade. Liking yours better. You need to watch that dripper if it is like mine, when the fuel gets turned off or on it changes.

[KWH]

I also made one for my Baker, I mounted it in front of the drive wheel. I never liked original set up. It would drip lube in front of the cut and by the time you got drip right it was time to shut down and still let sawdust build up on the wheels. I teed into the diesel return line with a shutoff and an old adjustable lube drip valve off of an old vacuum pump. I like it no more Lube tank and the lube goes on the blade and wheels and not on lumber.

[kelLOGg]

I added top/bottom and left/right side felt wipers to my Cooks maybe 15 years ago. Was very pleased with it EXCEPT the teeth would tear away at the felt and the teeth soon were not wiped. Made me think that a spray system may have been better.

[jpassardi]

For anyone interested in doing this, I decided to just buy the kit from Cook's for $150 because the needle valve with sight glass is $70 alone. It comes with a good portion of the fabrication done, filter, clamps, hose, small ball valve and I didn't have to chase down the felt.
I put it on the fixed part of the mill rather than have it moving with the adjustable guide and hose getting in the way since the fluid is now going directly on the blade and not dumping everywhere. I preferred the simplicity as opposed to a lubemizer - time will tell.
I did spray it orange though I'm not sure I matched the ugly faded salmon orange. ;)

[Rhodemont]

I am going to look into this.  The drip on the LT35 using the tank valve is too crude to control well and a little sawdust on the blade guide often builds up at the the point where the tube drips. 

[jpassardi]

Rhodemont, if you fab onto the supplied bracket to mount it like I did you won't even have to weld to the mill, just a hole through the back sheet metal for the hose and use the guide set screw to mount.

[DanMc]

I'm glad to see this thread.  The stock lube system on my LT35 does work, but I still get buildup on the blade and have to tweak the flow constantly.  It creates a hissing sound that clears up when I increase the flow.  

On my WM HM126, the lube system wasn't working, so when I milled sappy logs, I'd use a squirt bottle to spray some diesel on the blade.  It's pretty amazing how quickly that cleaned up the blade.  

The LT35, with the roller blade guides, accumulates junk on the blade much more than with the steel guide blocks on the HM126.  I think the pressure from the roller guides smashes dust onto the blade, contributing to the buildup.  On the 126, I only had buildup issues when milling white pine, and ran no lube with other species.  The LT35 accumulates buildup with any wood type, so this diesel/felt could be a big improvement.

[jpassardi]

Dan,
I used to do the spray on at each pass number as well.
You do need to let the dripper run a bit when you first start for the day to re-wet the felt.
I do have to loosen the nut to swing the bracket out of the way to do a blade change or the blade won't clear the front guard but not a big deal.

One side benefit to diesel for those of us in the frozen North is that you don't have to remember to remove the jug and drain the line before a freezing night.
We milled 800 BF of white pine on Saturday and -much better with diesel. Used less than a quart. I don't foresee going back anytime soon.

[DocGP]

I put that same brass valve in the line on my LT35 between the  top blade and the bottom blade.  Didn't add anything else and it worked great.  Used the main valve just for ON/Off, and used the sight glass to set drip rate.  Very seldom did I have to go over 1 drop per 5 seconds.  I cut lots of sticky SYP.  One quart of diesel would last a very long time.  

Doc