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Woodmizer problems

Started by JoeyLowe, March 14, 2002, 02:21:29 PM

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JoeyLowe

 :'( :'( :'( Hooked up my mill this morning and towed it to a pasture to mill some cedar logs.  Arrived bright and early and the fellow had one log at this pasture, but had 5 more at another pasture 10 miles away.  So I milled the first log without a problem.  Everything went smoothly and without any hitches.  Finished up and hooked up the mill to tow to the other pasture.  Got there without a problem and set up the mill to cut these cedars, and I'll be damned if the powerfeed would not mover forward.  Reverse works great and the blade guides and board return are all functional. The up/down feed works as advertised too.  

So I tow the beast home and call Woodmizer.  Great bunch of guys!  Very patient and understanding.  I still don't have the mill repaired, but I do have a strong direction in which to travel.  Very likely going to be a solenoid.  All my voltages are present and all wires are clean and tight.  Has anyone else encountered this problem?

Also had a message from one of my Thrifty Nickel ads.  This man is building a barn and has 30-40 pine trees, already limbed, bucked and staged that he wants milled into 2x6 and 2x4's.  I meet with him in the morning. ;D
--
Joey Lowe

"Working towards perfection has to be a part of anything one does.  You've got to put yourself into it." ... Sam Maloof (chairmaker)

Bud Man

Joey  That incident with the fork lift is becoming a faint memory ain't It.  Looks like you fell in a bucket of .... and are coming up smelling like Roses.  Don't change your socks, and keep on smiling !!  8)  Macurtis has solenoid problems too- Tom also posted a tip on preventing same sort of problem
The groves were God's first temples.. " A Forest Hymn"  by.. William Cullen Bryant

Tom

I don't know how your mill is configured but I have had the problem on my '90.  The speed control (rheostat) wears and usually will falter before it fails.  Sometimes it just quits.  If this is your problem, keep a spare.  There are things that will fail and put you out of business unless you have spares like:
Rheostat, drum switches, motor brushes (hydraulic motor too), chains (keep master links), Hydraulic system solonoiid, centering springs for hydraulic handles, blade guide rebuild kit, spark plugs, alternator light (the alternator uses this for a tickler).  You will find other stuff to keep on the truck but those are suggestions.

Corley5

Problems with a Wood Mizer??  With all the hype I've heard about them I thought they never broke down ;D.  But really there's nothing more aggravating than a machine that doesn't work right when there's a job at hand.  Hay balers are notorious and they always seem to quit tying when the thunder clouds are building.  Sounds like the service guys at WM really know there stuff and like their jobs 8).  You can't beat that!  
Burnt Gunpowder is the Smell Of Freedom

JoeyLowe

 :D :D :D  Mill is fixed!  After several calls to Woodmizer and several trips to the mill to check this or that, turns out it was the solenoid after all.  Fortunate thing is that since I have setworks on the mill, I have to spare solenoids available until I can order a replacement.  Funny thing is that after I checked all of the voltages and had all four panels laying in disarray, I remembered my days as a young marine working on F4 jets.  Whenever a solenoid stuck on one of those, we usually rapped it with the back of a rachet.  So I was standing there by the mill and I took my rachet and rapped the solenoid and wahla, it worked.  Switched the bad out with a good one and put it back together.  As I was gathering my tools together, I noticed a black rubber mallet in the bucket in front of the seat.  Then it suddenly dawned on me.  The guy I purchased the mill from told me that the solenoid stuck occasionally and to use the mallet to rap the side of the panel.  Duh!! ;D
--
Joey Lowe

"Working towards perfection has to be a part of anything one does.  You've got to put yourself into it." ... Sam Maloof (chairmaker)

Frank_Pender

Pavlov called that a "stimulas response".   8) 8) 8) 8) 8) 8) 8) 8) 8)
Frank Pender

ARKANSAWYER

Joey,
  Cedar gums up my wiper faster then any thing else and is bad about getting in the cover where the belt is for the feed motor.  I can cut 10 times as much of pine or oak before cleaning then cedar.  I hope you charged for each move once on site.
ARKANSAWYER
ARKANSAWYER

Jeff

Joey, I'm not sure how many gadgets and gismos those little orange mills have but my big orange mill is full of solonoids, microswitches, electronic power sources, timer switches, pushbottons, toggle switches and all sorts of strange devices. Any one of them may cause a different set of problems if it goes bad.  Maybe this is a good tip for you as you start out...

Many times with an electrical problem its tough finding out what the cause is. I now have a little notebook where I keep a log of what the problem was, and what the cure ended up to be. That way if it happens again down the line, I can refer back to my "Trouble shooting through experience guide" and usually end up saving a lot of down time. I got tired of thinking "I know this happened before, but I can't remember what the heck was wrong"
Just call me the midget doctor.
Forestry Forum Founder and Chief Cook and Bottle Washer.

Commercial circle sawmill sawyer in a past life for 25yrs.
Ezekiel 22:30

Bibbyman

Wood-Mizer gives you really good documentation and a full day of training on your mill (except the LT15) even if you bought it used.  The documentation on our new LT40 came in a ring binder about 3" thick.  

One large section includes exploded drawings of all the mill's assemblies and lists every part.  Most of the components not directly manufactured by WM have enough information (along with the defective part) to identify a replacement at a local supply shop.  

Another covers operation and maintenance. As part of that section, they also have a trouble-shooting guide.  A person with average mechanical skills and with some experience with his/her mill should be able to diagnose and fix most problems with or without parts from Wood-Mizer.  I've had on occasion, some nagging problems I was not able to pinpoint the cause.  The guys on the Wood-Mizer service staff were most helpful in helping me locate and correct these problems.  Afterwards,  I would check the troubleshooting guide and I would find it told me what to look for after all - I just didn't make the connection until other possibilities were checked off.

I think most of the high-end mills with hydraulics,  setwooks, debarkers, etc. start to get very complicated no matter who designed and built them.  Then it comes down to the quality of the components, and how well they are supported but the mill manufacture.
 ;)
Wood-Mizer LT40HDE25 Super 25hp 3ph with Command Control and Accuset.
Sawing since '94

JoeyLowe

The guy with the pines kind of surprized me.  He read my ad in the Thrity Nickel yesterday and telephoned me to see if I would be interested in milling 40-50 pines for him.  Said he was building a barn.  He gave me directions to his place, which coincidently is less than 5 miles from a medium-sized commercial mill that is well established and known to custom saw.  I arrive a little earlier than the appointed time this morning and was shocked at what I saw.  Here was this man and another fella sitting atop a couple of 4-wheelers parked in front of about 200 pines, ranging between 16-20' lengths and averaging 18-25" in diameter.  They were all neatly bucked and limbed and stacked in 4 piles just like what you would expect to see at a commerical mill site.

In front of the logs, were a large knuckleboom loader, two large commercial skidders and a D4 Bulldozer.  No one else was around other than these two guys.  I introduced myself and he showed me the logs. We got around to discussing prices and I brought up the subject of broken blades and off-bearers.  He kind of frowned about the broken blades and he told me that he didn't have any off-bearers, all he had were operators.  He told me the equipment was his but that he wasn't a logger. I didn't see any logging trucks and I thought it was kind of funny that he would have the logs staged instead of on the back of a logging truck.  We talked a little more and I asked him what he planned to do with the logs.  He told me that he was selling the logs that I saw, but that he planned to pull another 50 logs off of his property for milling into dimensional lumber for his son to use in building his house.  I asked him if he still intended to build a barn and he said maybe.

Long story cut short, as we were wrapping up, he told me that he would call me next week to set a time to mill the logs.  I just got the gut feeling that he was kicking the tires and has no intentions of calling.  I may be wrong, but I just found it odd for a fella to have all of that equipment, not to mention he said that he estimated the weight of the logs to be around 100,000 lbs.  That's logging talk there.  What are your thoughts?

As for the mill, Jeff that is an excellent idea about keeping a notebook handy. Bibbyman, I do have the manuals from Woodmizer but haven't been through the training yet.

Here's another problem too.  I installed the new rubber tires on the blade wheels and they fit very loose.  Is that normal?  The old tires were very tight.  The blade was jumping off the track with the old tires, and only did it once with the new tires.
--
Joey Lowe

"Working towards perfection has to be a part of anything one does.  You've got to put yourself into it." ... Sam Maloof (chairmaker)

Bud Man

Joey  I'm with you  the reference to 100,000 is pulp prices per ton.  Sounds like he's challenging you to   "Step Over That There Piece Of Firewood" ( Beg him to let you saw for him)   Stand your ground or he'll kick your butt up between your shoulders.      
The groves were God's first temples.. " A Forest Hymn"  by.. William Cullen Bryant

woodmills1

joey, the B57 belts reccomended by woodmizer do fit loose, and they are very easy to put on and take off.  on my HD-40 i went with B56 after reading the suffolk machinery blade handbook.  they are very hard to stretch over the wheels as they are one inch shorter, but they seem to last longer and i feel my bands don't break as soon.  However, i don't think your problem of the blades jumping off is due to the belts.  the only time i lose a band is if i do something wrong, like back into the log, or try to back out of an unfinished cut without holding the kerf open.  try this as a check.  put on a blade then run it while you set the correct tension.  then stop the blade and look at its position on the wheels/belts.  on both wheels you should just see the teeth and a small bit of the band itself jutting out over the drive belts.  this is called blade tracking and it is adjustable on woodmizer mills.  my guess is that one or both of your wheels will not show a uniform small amount of overhang.  i also bought my mill used, and found that it was in very poor adjustment from the previous owners attempts to get it to cut well.  the info sent from the company is very good at getting all of the adjustments set so that you can have trouble free sawing.
James Mills,Lovely wife,collect old tools,vacuuming fool,36 bdft/hr,oak paper cutter,ebonic yooper rapper nauga seller, Blue Ox? its not fast, 2 cat family, LT70,edger, 375 bd ft/hr, we like Bob,free heat,no oil 12 years,big splitter, baked stuffed lobster, still cuttin the logs dere IAM

Bibbyman

Joey,  how far are you from your nearest WM support center?  Could be well worth getting with them for your day of training and taking your mill along.  One major part of the training is going completely through the adjustment of your mill – literally hands on nut, bolt, wrench stuff, not just by pointing to an overhead.  

If you live pretty far from a WM support center,  you may be able to get them to do the training near you when the put on a show "in your neighborhood".  They often make service calls, etc. before and after the show as they can do so without charging the customer for the trip out.

It'll be the best day you ever invested. And it'll get that horse back up in front of the cart!  ;)
Wood-Mizer LT40HDE25 Super 25hp 3ph with Command Control and Accuset.
Sawing since '94

JoeyLowe

Hey Bibbyman,

I appreciate the suggestion about the day of training.  I'm probably too far from their cloest location.  I'm in Texas and they are in Missouri. I was wondering though if they would give me pointers at a local farm show.  They are supposed to be coing to my area soon.  Guess I'll give them a call in the morning.
--
Joey Lowe

"Working towards perfection has to be a part of anything one does.  You've got to put yourself into it." ... Sam Maloof (chairmaker)

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