Whatcha Sawin' 2022 ??

[caveman]

Had a sensor go out on my auto clutch at beginning of second day there that would let it just keep cycling around and around instead of stopping at the engaged position.

We had one of those sensors go out a few months ago in the middle of a job.  Reply 21 https://forestryforum.com/board/index.php?topic=75580.msg1909552#msg1909552 on this thread shows what we did to keep working until the part arrived the next week.

[Old Greenhorn]

Good luck with that Lynn! :D

I don't post here much because I mill in short spurts with no help just a few hours a day, then move on to other jobs. But today I hot a milestone. I run an LT50 that I don't own. I got conned talked into milling for the owner on my own terms and getting paid at a BF rate, plus hourly for maintenance or other chores. (I also got a pretty good push from MM). I cut to order only so far. In the last 13 months I have only milled 15,300 BF in my spare time.
Today it was only 300BF but I hit a small milestone. I now have more hours on that mill than the owner does. I thought that was neat. Math also tells me I averaged 115BF/hr (on the meter). I don't know or care if that is good or not. (probably not.) I just know what I did, and that's good enough for me.

[Old Greenhorn]

MAN,  I shouldn't have never posted nuthin' here yesterday. Today I sawed... nothing, except one flitch. It wasn't because I didn't try though.

 I went to the mill and shortly while I was bucking a log Bill showed up with a 4 seat polaris SXS that was dropped off for demo test. 3 of us went for a test ride and directly he was driving through the swamp/pond with water up over the floor boards. When it got halfway up to the dash, we backed out and zipped around in the woods for a while then checked out the engine and stuff. I think he is hooked, so much better than his 6 wheel gator. They dropped me back at the mill and went up to the shop to prep for another job. I loaded a log on the mill and commenced cutting. I opened the first side, then on the second face I took a couple slabs of small junk. I was using the Accuset in the 'mill down' for 1" boards. So I was cruising at yellowhammer speed (almost), just running down the log, jog up, gig back, hit the downfeed and send it back down the log. On the 4th cut I gigged back, hit the down feed and sent it, but the head kept coming down. I barely stopped the forward feed before I broke the band as it was raking down the front of the log. The head dropped until the debarker motor hit a bunk. I could not get the head to come up and the accu-set displayed "ERROR" (well thank you very flippin' much). After I got a hold of myself I tried to raise the head, no soap. I put the accuset in manual, still no joy. I shut the engine off got a drink of water and thought for a minute and checked around for other damage. No moving it, no way. I went up to the shop and talked to Bill, same problem he had when the mill was new and it caused a lot of damage. (Bent the debarker blade and broke the moveable blade guide off the machine.) He said, 'guess you gotta call WM, I gotta go'. SO I went back down and uncovered and checked all the breakers, nothing remarkable. I tried it again, and the up/down now worked. I ran through a few dry cycles doing a 'mill down' as when it failed. All good. But I am NOT happy with this. I got lucky and there was no damage, this time. I went home, brought up the manual and called WM, NY. No luck there, they had a record of the original problem and the warranty transducer replacement, but could not offer any suggestions. They got a guy in Indy to call me back.
 When he called I explained it all and he summarized by saying 'so it crashed, wouldn't move, then it did move and now everything seems ok, right?' "Yeah I said, what should I be checking?" 'There's nothing you can check if it's working right, it was just an intermittent issue. It's fine, for now'. I was getting just a tad aggravated. "Look, I spent the last 40 years of my career troubleshooting problems on CNC and other equipment that cost 20 times what this mill does. I know that when a problem happens once, it will happen again. Every time it happens, it will get more expensive and in some cases can cause extensive damage. I want to know what should I be checking and looking at. Do we have a daily maintenance issue, is housekeeping a problem, have I missed a routine repair or adjustment? I will not run a machine that could crash like this at any moment." Now he was getting a tad aggravated with me and laid out the 'no machine is perfect' story line. Which of course I well know and understand. He missed my point, so I asked him specific questions about which components were involved, how do I access them, what problems are they subject to, what routine things could I check and look at? He was fairly helpful on that but not overly so. I didn't have a warm fuzzy, but I did have some helpful knowledge I could use to get me further, good enough, for now.
 I drove back to the mill and pulled the transducer cover, checked alignment, cleaned everything I could find (it really wasn't bad at all, just a little dry sawdust) and covered it back up. Checked the mill again and it still seemed to work OK, but it started raining and was almost 5pm, so I bagged it for the day. Tomorrow will be an adventure. I hate running equipment with an unknown problem that could suffer a catastrophic failure at any point during routine operation.
 When you are blowin' and goin' and all of a sudden it all crashes for no reason, loud and hard, well that's just no fun. I've been there too many times.

[barbender]

That is a story I have heard from Accuset 2 equipped mills a few times, and I don't like it at all.

[bigblockyeti]

Yeah, I don't think I'd be too happy with such a response either.  I'm a big fan of fail safe and that's anything but.  I can't help but wonder if they're not getting a little big in their britches with all the back orders they have right now?  I suspect there's a few folks in the organization that are fairly competent and could lead you down the path helping to figure out the root cause, the fella you spoke with certainly wasn't that person.  It's basic ladder logic, some people get it, some don't.  What year and how many hours on the mill?

[Old Greenhorn]

Well, I should say that the first thing I did was search here on the forum because I know a couple of guys have mentioned this issue in the past, but I just couldn't find the thread I was looking for.
The fella at WM, NY tried really hard, knowing that Bill is a good customer and know also realizing he knows me too. He gave us a ride back to Bill's camper up at Boonville with three boxes of blades we picked up, plus other stuff, in the company Ranger during a full downpour. So he said, let me get you connected with somebody in Indy who should really know this stuff. The guy in Indy looked up the account and asked which piece of equipment we were having issues with and he knew we have an LX25, RS-2, Slabmizer, and the LT50 among other things. I was just hoping he could educate me on finding a diagnosis. When he started to explain that the transducer could only be tested with a $10k piece of gear that even they didn't have I realized he was a 'black box' type of guy. I started to explain to him how a transducer works and how it is tested and that I don't have a scope, nor am I good at using one. He said something like ' Well it sounds like you know more about this than I do and you know these are pretty simple machines and sometimes these things just happen and there is nothing you can do about it.' If it was anybody but WM I would have been reading the guy a litany of stuff about tech trouble shooting over the phone, but I let it go. I just took the lead and asked a lot of leading questions and he finally 'mentioned' the diagnostics section inside the Accuset, which is (a good part of) what I needed all along. Knowledge is power, give me knowledge.

The mill was built in 2017, used by WM for a show demo for about a year, then Bill bought it from them at Boonville in 2018 with all the 'new unit' warranty, etc. It has only 250 hours on it. The first several transducer failures which were quite expensive happened in September 2018 and the transducer was replaced under warranty I don't know about the other parts. During those first failures there were a lot of parts replaced because of damage. I'm in the middle of an order and don't have time for that now. I lost the whole day yesterday.

[WV Sawmiller]

Tom,

   It could have been worse. What if the tech had said "First you find the brown and the purple wires, then you ...".

   Sorry - the devil made me say that.

[Beavertooth]

Tom,   I have a 2007 LT70 with accuset 2.  In 2008 when still under warranty my saw head dropped just like yours all the way to the bottom.  I called Indy and they told me it was a failure in the up down gear box and explained why it did that. (which I don't remember the explanation  ) Been so long I can't remember if it would go back up and just fall again or not even go back up. But I didn't saw with it until they sent me the new gear box and it did fix the problem and had no more issues until 2012 when it did it again. That time they sent me a brake that attaches to the top shaft of gear box and stops it where it is suppose to be every time. That has been 10 years ago and have never had a problem since.  
                                 

[terrifictimbersllc]

I upgraded my 2001 super to Accuset 2 In about 2010, then ran it successfully 9 years after that. Don't remember if I ever had that nose dive you describe, but do remember that most of the nose dives were my fault. Do I believe it could happen yes, but it is a great system.

That being said I would be concerned if i were getting ready for a flight and the cockpit door was open and I saw an orange screen and the pilots were talking to each other about the auto down or set to bed mode.😞

[Old Greenhorn]

In reverse order of responses:
Dennis: So are you saying yo hit the 'down' lever by accident. That would mean it stopped when you wanted it to? This one I had was an uncontrolled plummet to the bed until the debarker was hammed against the bunk. I had no control, kept lifting the switch to make the head raise and it kept falling. Basically what we used to call a 'runaway condition' on CNC machines.

Beaver: Yeah, I had a concern it might be the brake, the system on a 50 is different than a 35. Still trying to parse that out as to what the control was thinking. If it got the 'go down 1" ' command and then the brake failed when the control told it to stop, it just continued on until it crashed into the bed? It's kind of a 'chicken or the egg' question. Did it forget where it was going and just kept on going, OR could it just not stop when it got where it was going? The control displays "ERROR" but it doesn't tell me if the error is that it forgot where it was, or if it is not in the place it should be. I think putting that word on the control is about as helpful as putting up a message that says "YUP, you just crashed and burned". I really don't want to prove which it was.  >:(

Howard, my smart-aleck friend, if they had given me those color codes and some useful information, I would have no issue following them. Indy is above the Mason Dixon line and we all know our colors up here. :D

FWIW, today I went back and started over. it ran fine, but I don't trust it, I now do one move at a time and wait until each move is complete before I float into the next one. So it takes a little longer, but if it happens again, maybe I will get a few milliseconds to see what is happening while it is dropping.

[terrifictimbersllc]

Dropping the band on the cant by hitting the auto down to early, and then hoping that it didn't bend your blade guide arm up, that's all too familiar. On my 70 super, the head return control overrides the fall if you do that so that prevents some of it.

I understand what you were saying about a freefall. Not saying you did this and I'm sure what you describe is not the same, but that's a common occurrence if you haven't reset the set to bed, and it still wants to go to down to 1 inch where it was last used, for example. Again I'm not too helpful with what you observed.

It's been three years since I last ran Accuset 2. My new machine, my iPhone my iPad my laptop, glad to say neither of our newer vehicles, but things with a computer need to be reset once in a while and it's probably too much to try to explain whatever the Bermuda triangle is that happens now and then. Just take steps that life and limb are not at stake. Maybe my standards are too low.

[Poquo]

Tom, the CNC Machines had a big red E-Stop button to hit when they went haywire. On the 50 does it have a key start ? If it does try to crash be ready to cut the switch off. 

[Old Greenhorn]

That presents a conundrum. When I was troubleshooting big machines, if the Op hit the e-stop, we would lose all the errors codes the machine would pop up, so we had nothing to tell us where to look. The same would happen if I could shut the mill off with the key in the 3 seconds I have before it crashes into the bed. 
 I am also a tad concerned that it might give me new problems by killing the engine, drives, and accuset all at once. But your idea is interesting and perhaps if I could hit the button to get it into 'manual mode' before things crunch. I don't know if I can pull that off, but I think it will be my first try. With my luck it will be 2" off the deck when it happens again and there will be no time to even cuss.
 

[Southside]

Does Accuset II have references you can program?  IE a "go to".  On my Super 70 I have both temporary and set references.  The temporary would erase when you reset them or turn the mill off.  The set ones can be adjusted but stay in memory, so with one button I can tell the mill to raise automatically to 36" or fall to 17 13/32".  I am wondering if there is a set reference that has a value of "0" inches from the bed or something like that and it decided to go there.

[fluidpowerpro]

Just finish sawing a large white pine for a repeat customer. Final was 816 bf of 2 x 6 x 10'. Next on the agenda is to spend the afternoon cleaning the sap off of everything. This was my first time cutting wp. Definitely adding to the "not my favorite" list. I was however glad to see that my water/pine sol lube did a better than expected job keeping the blade clean.

 

 

 

 

 

[Magicman]

I am still here and still in the sand box.  186 post/timbers (~18650bf) sawed and 1539 bf of 1X10's.  I am measuring/bucking all of the logs which takes time plus some of the "bought" logs are dirty too. 

I am sawing hourly rate for 8 hours per day which puts his sawing/handling cost at ~$1.00 per bf which is about a third of what the timbers would cost him "store bought". 

I can only saw 4 days next week before prior commitments bring me home.  It would be mid-November before I could go back.

[richhiway]

I am still here and still in the sand box.  186 post/timbers (~18650bf) sawed and 1539 bf of 1X10's.  I am measuring/bucking all of the logs which takes time plus some of the "bought" logs are dirty too.  

I am sawing hourly rate for 8 hours per day which puts his sawing/handling cost at ~$1.00 per bf which is about a third of what the timbers would cost him "store bought".  

I can only saw 4 days next week before prior commitments bring me home.  It would be mid-November before I could go back.

working hard m.m.! a dollar for anything in this economy is a great bargain! 

[Magicman]

Yes, I am loaded up and about to make the 236 mile trip to the "sand box" for 4 more day's sawing.

There were only 12 unsawn logs (maybe 2 hours) there when I left Friday so hopefully something is happening today.

[barbender]

FPP, I consider white pine a pure pleasure to saw and work with. I usually skip to the mill when there is white pine on deck👍👍

[fluidpowerpro]

Huh!, well I guess maybe I'm too picky, spoiled or whatever. The sap was terrible. It cut ok, but I did get an occasional wave by knots. We sawed a few red pine the same day and those cut really nice with absolutely no waves. 

[Southside]

Try diesel for the band lube next time. 

[WV Sawmiller]

   I have a gallon of WD40 and find a rag soaked in it does pretty good to help remove the sap residue.

[barbender]

They look really fresh cut, mine have typically "aged" a bit, I'm sure that has something to do with how sticky they are. Balsam fir is another one where when you blink, your eyes want to stick shut😂

[cutterboy]

 I usually skip to the mill when there is white pine on deck👍👍

Now that's something I'd like to see. :D :D ;D

[cutterboy]

White pine that has been freshly felled makes a sticky mess on the mill. I let my pine logs sit up off the ground for about six weeks before I saw them. No problems then with sap. When the yellow sap on the end of the logs turns white, it's good to go.