Hydraulic Sawmill

[charles mann]

Sorry a little late to this. There is/was a Logmaster LM5 on Ebay. They ran the band with hyd, you may want to take a look and call LM for advise.

Heck, that place isn't far from where i grew up, well, i guess i have yet to grow up, but where i was born and raised. its the town just north and across the river from my old living location. 
i guess i shoulda paid more attention to this thread, guess i missed your comment as most of the time during this thread, i was viewing it over my ancient iPhone 5.
i will call them tomorrow and see if they can help shed a little light on this subject. especially due to the weight of that lil 4bt power plant.
This is for any and all to chime in.
Now, to bring this topic back up. I sourced my own lil 4bt, putting out 100hp at 2200 RPMs. when i decided to go belt drive and give up on the hydraulic option, i didn't think twice about this. 
with the weight of the lil eng at nearly 700# dry, not counting cooling system and fuel tank. this mill will be very top heavy. Would putting the pwr plant, cooling, fuel and hydraulic system on the back end of my bunks and run a caterpillar hydraulic track down the outside of my bunk rails be better than mounting all that weight on my saw beam/carriage platform?
Another reason I'm looking at going back to the hydraulic option is, a clutch unit that will take 100+hp, without using a conventional auto/construction/industrial equipment clutch, pressure plate and throw bearing. 

[mike_belben]

Bandsaw right? 

Motor on the carriage can be done by beefing up the rollers and roller axles and supporting the chassis better to prevent bowing as the gantry rides down the rails. 

Mounting the motor stationary will mean a fortune in hydraulic hoses and flexible cable carrier to bring fluid power to the saw drive wheels and height control. They will always be susceptible to fork or log injury and sun degradation.  

Youll have to weigh it out as to which problem you can manage easier.  


ZoomBoom material handlers and old genie snorkel lifts both ran 4BT.  I think LULL also used them for a while.  The ZB and lull probably used a driveshaft to a powershift trans and tcase but im just about certain that the snorkel lift took all power from a hydraulic pump off the crank and may have the parts youd need for coupling.  

Another source would be rock crushing and screening equipment and maybe truck reefers such as thermo king.  They couple directly to a compressor head but are so plentiful that you may be able to source some scrapped parts to modify.  I think TK runs isuzus so its kind of a wild goose chase.  Oh tow behind air compressors ran them too.  You really need to find an old diesel shop and raid their storage shed.  Unfortunately 4BT is a very expensive engine to fool with.   Isuzu, deutz, detroit even kubota seem a lot more affordable. 

Theres a guy in north vermont or NY thats always advertised cummins engines on CL in that region... Its all he does and would probably know everything they came in and every configuration. 

[mike_belben]

...actually good chance he has the parts you need.  Parting out a hydraulic unit then selling the engine for someones rat rod with a standard bell adapter is an easy way to make money. 

[pineywoods]

Another option with the all hydraulic setup is a pantograph with hard hydraulic lines and short hoses at the joints. Takes up a lot of room but works fine. Pretty much a fixed installation.

[mike_belben]

Is that the double jib boom jointed together for carrying hoses and wires?  

[charles mann]

Mike, 
The carriage will be a 6 post design, 4 posts with a carriage wheel at ea post, then 2 more posts to run the saw head up and down. All 6 posts will be 3" x 3" x 0.250" with bracings all corners. I may even "X" brace the back post to the saw head posts. 
When i get back to the hotel tonight, ill sketch out what im talking about. 
I may even go to 6 carriage wheels, if i go with the engine on the carriage instead of on the log bunk. 

Also got ahold of the builders of the LM5/6 that was mentioned earlier, and was invited to the shop to take a look at how/what they build their stuff out of. Unfortunately, they dont build the hydraulic mills anymore, but he says their LM 1 is a smaller, manual version of their hydraulic units. 

[mike_belben]

If youre gonna put 6 wheels, consider warpage during welding and the possibility that all 6 wont touch the track at once.  If the carriage rocks itll show up in the cut.  When you weld on one side at the center of a span, that member always curls toward the heat.  Maybe the middle wheels should be bolted on.  Youll figure it out.. Just keep warpage and wheel plane in mind. 

[charles mann]

Bandsaw right?

Motor on the carriage can be done by beefing up the rollers and roller axles and supporting the chassis better to prevent bowing as the gantry rides down the rails.

Mounting the motor stationary will mean a fortune in hydraulic hoses and flexible cable carrier to bring fluid power to the saw drive wheels and height control. They will always be susceptible to fork or log injury and sun degradation.  


Theres a guy in north vermont or NY thats always advertised cummins engines on CL in that region... Its all he does and would probably know everything they came in and every configuration.

Yes sir, bandsaw.

I'm going to attach, or try to attach a pic of what the carriage is going to look like. it is from Matt Creamona's design plans i bought from him.
 
Do you have a contact for this guy you are referring to?
where it is highlighted on the motor/gb for the head raise lower. pretend that motor is not there, and mentally draw in an X brace attaching the middle support tubing, on both sides, to the rear support tubing.
 
I was also thinking of putting saw head beam in the front of the carriage and leaving the center support tubing in place and putting a additional guide rail on those support tubings to help disperse the load of the engine, cooling system, 10-20 gal fuel tank and blade cooling tank. 
Plus if i go hydraulic, ill need a 30-40 gal hydraulic tank mounted up there too. 
Main reason for going back to the hydraulic option, even if i use a clutch and 3 belt pulleys is, its hard, at least for me, to find a clutch that will hold up to the 100hp the engine is rated at. 
If anyone has a suggestion on a clutch system rated for 100hp, I'm all ears and open to ideas and suggestions. 

OK, its not letting me attach a pdf doc for the visual reference. I will draw in the X brace, best i can on the printed out page, take a pic of it, and upload it that way.

[charles mann]

mike, trying the pdf doc again.

[charles mann]

If youre gonna put 6 wheels, consider warpage during welding and the possibility that all 6 wont touch the track at once.  If the carriage rocks itll show up in the cut.  When you weld on one side at the center of a span, that member always curls toward the heat.  Maybe the middle wheels should be bolted on.  Youll figure it out.. Just keep warpage and wheel plane in mind.

had already thought of that. put the first 4 wheels in place as instructed on the plans for this mill. 
Once the carriage is in place, set, mark, lift carriage, and install the last 2 wheels.
As for warpage from welding, i plan to weld 1" beads, opposing each other, then moving to the other side of the build, in the same section. say, I'm welding the X braces in, looking at the carriage with saw head to my right, weld the top left upper o/b, then move to the top left, lower i/b. as those cool, move to the far side and do the same, then come back and do the top right upper o/b, top right lower i/b and go back to the other side. rinse and repeat till its fully welded.    
I will use my mig with gas shielding instead of my 225 bobcat, mostly for the noise reduction of the wire welder compared to the screaming engine of the bobcat, plus having to knock off the flux each time before striking the arc again. 

[Hilltop366]

If no need to be mobile.

saw mill , home made saw - YouTube

[charles mann]

If no need to be mobile.

saw mill , home made saw - YouTube

Ill watch vid when i get back to hotel, but i would like to have ability to be mobile. I know the width of the saw head will be beyond or rite at the 102" limit. If beyond, ill have to be able to move either the band wheels inside the 102", or pick the carriage up and turn it 90 degrees, sitting it on my log bunk. 

[Magicman]

He is sawing SYP so I wonder where in the South that is?  

[Southside]

Rather than a clutch, why not use a tension / release, hinged plate system similar to the "auto clutch" on Woodmizer mills? 

[mike_belben]

Vermont CL, search "cummins" and he is the one in wolcott.  Pic of engines lined up inside a building. 

[charles mann]

If no need to be mobile.

saw mill , home made saw - YouTube

i do like that. i guess i don't have to be mobile, and if not, it won't cost NEAR as much to build. the log bunk and carriage metal alone is $2700. i can probably get 2 25' 12" I beams and a BUNCH (15-20) 7' 6" I beams for a little over scrap steel price ($500-$600) and he even has metal wheel carts that he will probably throw in, just to get rid of them. Or i could even buy carriage wheels from cook's sawmill and build my own cart/s. I AM liking that guys set up. 
Is he running the drive wheel via a pto shaft and angle gearbox? it looks like the pwr unit is at a 45 degree angle and the gb is a box off 1 of those batwing mower. don't have an old batwing, but I'm sure i could locate 1, and i could get an old drive shaft from an auto salvage yard. 
even take a 1/4 to 1/2 hp electric motor and reduce the speed with a reduction gb to pull the cart. 
Thanks for showing me this. It has given me an idea, 1 that i might go for.

Vermont CL, search "cummins" and he is the one in wolcott.  Pic of engines lined up inside a building.

Mike, Thanks for the info. will look him up. 

Rather than a clutch, why not use a tension / release, hinged plate system similar to the "auto clutch" on Woodmizer mills?

are you talking about a tension pulley, similar to like the idler pulley for a serpentine belt on a car/tck? If so, it IS a tried and proven method. 
I was kicking that idea around too. 
Just worried that, 
1. the belts not having tension on them will burn the belt up as the engine is sitting there running, spinning the pulley and burning flat spots on the belts. 
2. engaging the pulleys with that much hp will be tough and rough on the belts during engagement. 
I KNOW this isn't an aircraft, but as soon as the engine is fired up on these belt driven helicopters iv been flying, the clutch MUST begin tightening to prevent burning of the belts at the engine side of the drive system. 
I have looked into even copying the Schweizer design, using a linear motor to pull the belts tight, with a limit switch to open the circuit, stopping the actuator form moving and allowing for the actuator to engage and re-tension the belts as they become loose. 
1 big draw back to that style, even the robinson R22/44 design of actuation is, it SLOW to fully engage. which means engagement/disengagement during operation is out of the question, unless i want to wait the 30-45 sec for engagement/disengagement. 
I WILL put an emergency kill button on it, running to the injector pump solenoid kill switch. 
I like this site and all you folks. Yaw are full of GREAT ideas and suggestions and a very homey climate to converse and share ideas. 
  

 

[charles mann]

So, after watching the majority of the vid. it IS a bush hog gb, with a implement pto shaft, both of which i have laying around from my old land pride shredder, coupled to an old auto drive shaft, on an engine with a xmsn. THIS i can build with ease and for a LOT less than what its going to cost me to build a conventional run of, no pun intended, the mill sawmill.

I might have found my build. But dang i wanted to to be mobile. Central isn't really booming with trees that need to be milled, and a 3hr drive from the pinewoods of east tx, i don't think getting customers to me would be easy. Granted I'm not looking at building a mill for production work, just as a hobby to offset the winter months during the off season of fire fighting, so i don't have to go to hippy central, oh, i mean portland oregon.  

[Southside]

See if you can get a close eye on a LT40 or larger with an auto clutch, the engine tilts via an actuator a few degrees to engage the drive. On a diesel or gas she is idled down and the throttle up happens as it engages, on an electric mill it's always at speed so she gives a decent chirp. That set up probably has over a billion starts on it and it does not tear up belts. 

[charles mann]

See if you can get a close eye on a LT40 or larger with an auto clutch, the engine tilts via an actuator a few degrees to engage the drive. On a diesel or gas she is idled down and the throttle up happens as it engages, on an electric mill it's always at speed so she gives a decent chirp. That set up probably has over a billion starts on it and it does not tear up belts.

well, those bottom figures sounds like a number I'm not gonna be scared of going to. instead of engaging the belts with an actuator, i could just tilt the engine and do the same. there is member on here that lives a few hrs from me, just south of tyler that has i think the lt 40 or 50. he invited me over to talk shop, along with den-den form lufkin. since I'm going to lufkin on my next break in 6 days, ill swing by den-den's place and visit with him before scooting up to nac, and talking to log master. the guy with log master sure was helpful and offered up as much assistance as needed to get me up and running. 
but after watching the vid posted by hilltop366 i think ill go the way of that guy's build. but heck, even with a 12" i beam, i could run my carriage down the length of the beam, OR, pin stationary and run a log cart, all on the same beam. all the 6" i beams are both together, so i could bolt them together and even make below bunk rail cart. that vid gave me so many more ideas. 
I will start looking for an actuator that has the umpf to more a 800# engine or have enough pull and tension holding power to engage the belts.
any links to a company that offers such a sturdy actuator? other than contacting wm to see if they would spill the beans on their actuator source.

[charles mann]

oh, I'm watching a youtube vid now of a backwoods country bumpkin getting ready to saw huge sinker cypress. he doesn't know where to hold the mic for best vocal clarity, but i think he said he has a hydraulic pump on the back side of his idler pulley, connected by belts. 

would doing something like that cause to much parasitic drag on the system, just to power the, depending if i go stationary with the mill head or mobile, carriage motors and or the raise/lower? 

[mike_belben]

A backside belt power take off will need a full wrap on the pulley and will only work with a flat serpent belt.  I dont know how much horse power you can get that way or if using backside skews the power formula ratings, i suspect it does.  Power is taken off the ribbed side of serpents or veed side of vees.  Backside is for tension and redirects.  

You can backside a vee belt but the smaller the radius the quicker the failure.  A 2" diameter backside tensioner pulley has been on my truck for 2 years and its only maybe 15 or 20 degrees bend into a straight chord.  I had a 1.25" diameter pulley backside previously and it shredded belts in about 2 months until i deleted it and went with the 2 inch.  Basically vee belts need generous radius for a sharp backside wrap.  Mower decks are typicaly 3 to 5 inch.


They do make DC clutched pumps with double vee belt sheaves.  Plow trucks with auto trannies run them, aka central hydraulics.  New from surplus center theyre around $500.  Flip toggle switch to turn pump on.

Are we talking about belts to run your band wheel?

I would consider having a flywheel to long keyed shaft hub adapter made then put a 3 sheave pulley on it with a lovejoy after it at the end of the shaft.  The belts run the bandwheel takeoff power, the jaw coupler runs the hydraulic pump.  Have your drive belts on a spring loaded idler setup to kick out when no power.  When the machine is running you could rotate a bellcrank (boomerang shaped) double idler to engage or disengage the main drive.  In one position it lifted the belts off the drive sheave so they dont sit there burning up.  The other position it lays the belts onto the drive sheave and engages the band wheel.  I guess itd be a sort of slack tender, ive seen it on old machinery.  

 The issue is youve got too much power for a centrifigal clutch and old school hand clutched sheave housings are hens teeth nowadays.  I guess a car trans could be cobbled but thats extra weight.  

A hydraulic motor to drive the saw loses efficiency but it sure is an easier way to turn the blade on and off. Just flip the detent lever on your motor spool to on.

[charles mann]

Mike, i went from NOT enough power, now to to MUCH power. i got to thinking. i may use a front mounted hydro pump, like my old jd450 had, coming off the harmonic balancer, taking my radiator fan off, moving the radiator to a new location and running an electric fan for cooling. 

I do like the idea that southside mentioned, an actuator move the engine, or used to tighten the belts on these lil piston helis. i think tensioning the belts would easier than lifting the engine. lifting the engine defeats the purpose of rubber vibration isolators to cut down on eng generated stresses and fatigue on the structure, mostly the welds. but its nothing a line up pin and cup couldn't handle. 

i did find on surplus center, an 8 groove, not sure the belt width though, serpentine clutch pulley, but was rated for i think 50hp or less. 

Is there any real reason to disengage the belt drive for the drive wheel during operations? safety, yes, but I'm not gonna be sticking my body parts in the system with power turned on. 

iv witnessed a guy loosing his red grease rag and flight glove, trying to find the source of the oil leak coming from our #2 eng xmsn. we brought both engines online, brought them to 100% with the FOD screen and bullet cowling off to find the leak. it was at night, which posed its own problems, not to mention a LOT of CFM of air being sucked into the engine. well, he slipped while sipping the xmsn down, and there went to rag, some go burned up, the rest went out the bleed band, same for his flt glove. we never found the leak that night, but did FOD out a 2 million $ engine and just went ahead put a new nose box on it. 

moral of story, seen to many instances of putting body parts in areas that tend to make a person draw back a nub. 

so other than safety, why disengage the drive system until cutting operations cease, or failure somewhere on the machine that warrants shutting the machine down?

[Southside]

The first thing that comes to mind as a reason to disengage the band when not cutting is band life. You only have so many flex cycles / revolutions in a band before they fail and to burn up that number while rotating logs, leveling logs, removing lumber, etc is an expensive way to go about it. Along the same thinking is related maintenance, band wheel belts, roller guides, etc. Why have stuff in motion when not needed? 

[Crusarius]

Another thing I did not think about for my mill was issues while cutting. I made a major miscalculation and have times logs with sweep will hang into the carriage path and stop the carriage. I have had plenty of times I have had to stop and shift the log. I am much happier having to do that with the blade stopped.

[Southside]

Yup - don't want to back up with a spinning band either.