Automated Twin blade sawmill build.

[mikeb1079]

just read through this thread....amazing!!! 

great work casey!

[CaseyK]

Got a lot done this weekend:
Got the PE brackets welded in place,
ran the PE cables back to main panel,
mounted both drag chains,
pulled in the power wires and brake wires for each of the 3 24volt motors to the main panel,
added plastic junction box for the wireless receivers and Ethernet router,
mounted carriage safety brackets. (2 need to be adjusted)
Swapped  orientation of horizontal gear box. (still need to fine tune horizontal blade angle)
Mounted the PLC back plane and wired in the (2) wireless remotes and verified functionality of one going to plc and the other controlling the relays manually without plc control.
And the highlight of the week was when my 10 year old asked me to teach him to drive the tractor so he can move the logs around so we spent an hour or so learning to drive the tractor and moving logs around and even put one in position of the mill for testing later this week.

Mondays punchlist will be:
finalize horizontal Blade,
mount PE's
wire up all 3 motors to PWM relay system,
Wire up 24v,12v,com from battery box to main PLC panel,
relocate the wireless receivers to new plastic box,
Add plastic wire flex covering for wires,
Wire up the 3 motor brakes to the run relays.
If that all goes well then hope to make a manual cut that evening.

[brianb88]

I don't know how I have missed reading this.  Very interesting.  Im looking forward to following this.  Nice work!

[Busy Beaver Lumber]

I absolutely love posts like this one on builds and watching the item come alive. I never cease to be amazed the the diverse talents on this forum. You go to some forums and all you get is mindless chatter, but on the forestry forum you actually get and education and inspiration

Well done CaseyK

[CaseyK]

Took all day but I got all 3 motors & brakes wired in to the relays and Pwm speed controller, got all the wiring in plastic raceway and relocated the wireless receivers, still got to get the horizontal blade gearbox secured and level and carriage safety brackets reworked, and estoppel wired in before trying to cut with her, hopefully Tuesday evening

[Southside]

Seriously - amazing work.  Can you post some more photos when you get a chance?

What sort of scanning / optimizing set up will you have?  What have you figured out for getting the cut lumber off the log before the next pass? 

Honestly trying to wrap my head around this, for me I can learn by watching and doing so maybe a trip to Louisiana will be in order one of these days to see it work if that is OK. 

[Ugly Tree]

CaseyK, Love the build.  I'm up in Felsenthal.  We come to Farmerville pretty regular to Walmart, hardware store, etc.  Would love to stop by and check it out once you get her up and running.  I know how you try to get stuff done in between hitches too.  I worked for Rowan offshore for about ten years.  Only did about three in the GOM.  Seven overseas.  Used to love that 4-5 weeks off.  Sucks going back though.  When do you go back?  I'm at the Eldo refinery now.  Shift work.  Not as good, but can still get a lot done.

[CaseyK]

Southside,
i will try to get some pics posted tomorrow, The only scanning i will have is a laser attached 6" below the horizontal blade that will detect the log diameter at the small end and at the large end, from there it will calculate the height that the small end will have to be raised to align the core. Centering the log left and right will have to be done manually. 
Ugly tree,
Soon as i get her up and running everyone is invited to come see her cut. I head back to Brasil next monday evening.

Today started out good and i was able to finally get the horizontal blade gearbox mounted solid and got the carriage captive braces secured.
Once i got all of the PWM controls wired in and the motors connected i took all 3 motors thru a check out at various speeds, starting and stopping, forward and reverse. I swapped from one motor to the next for 2-3 min of running before moving to the next and then returning to the same motor.
At that point after 20 min of testing i was really pleased with the controls and things were going great, but one by one the PWM (speed controls) would first loose speed control and then loose stopping ability, so i had to replace the (3) PWMs with another set of power relays for testing and everything functioned correctly.
Plan on adding a 12v/24v slow /fast power relay in front of the new relays mounted today to improve the positioning once the PLC is controlling the system.
If i get to work on it wednesday then im hoping i will finally get to saw my first log, if so i will definetly post a couple of pics.

[fishfighter]

One hell of a mill. I'm down the road from you, New Roads. I will have to make a trip to see this beast in action one day.

[CaseyK]

Finally fired up the mill and cut some wood.
It was a learning process to say the least, It was awesome to punch the button on the remote and have it make its first pass thru the log. I got a bunch of pics and video to post tomorrow.

Thanks everyone for all the ideas and encouragement, I couldnt have done it without this forumn.

[pineywoods]

Hey, I gotta eyeball this thing ! When you get back home after the next rotation, pm me an address, I'll come visit.

[CaseyK]

 

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

 

[CaseyK]

Next project is the blade guards to redirect the wood chips away from the radiator, when I tried cutting the 4x4 the blades stalled but found the problem was the toggle over center wasn't going all the way in position because of hitting some metal so I had to torch out some spacing and then it cut the 4x4 with no problem. Added an extension support for the side to side wire drag chain but still need to add the one for up/ down, since the speed regulators went belly up and I couldn't slow the feed works & I promised I wouldn't get hurt I tied 40ft of yellow cable to the motor kill switch and all the relays are 120 volt so my buddy manned the blue extension cable as the estopp on motion and we initiated all the cuts with the wireless remotes while sitting on the porch 30ft away. Adding the wireless remote was a giant help on this project & made checkout a lot faster & safer.

[CaseyK]

Oh ye The remote control idea was found here on FF, thanks for the idea Pineywoods & yes next hitch you will have to come bye and take a look at her, once I get the positioning and speed control lined out.

[CaseyK]

Oh ye, I scored a 20ft trailer load of cypress logs today for free today,  already placed next to the concrete driveway, just had to cut to length and load with tractor. I'm waiting on a buddy now so we can go pick up a 17ft pine log about 3 ft in diameter, we will probably have to cut her in 1/2 to load her. I'm going to used the cypress for indeed decks and a base for cutting the logs on. At the first of next hitch home I will extend to tracks from 20 to 50ft and move the mill out of the back yard and get the indeed decks in place.

[fishpharmer]

Looking really great!

[brianb88]

I cant wait to see some video of this in action.  Impressive.

[CaseyK]

Fixing to load the flight to brasil, now I got 28 days to make my mill to do list for next hitch when I get back & also make a little overtime money to pay for the extras.

[CaseyK]

Goodmorning
I have some questions for all my FF sawers.

Given that my rails will be 40-50ft  long I could have 3 log bunks set up for 9-10ft logs to cut ties, my rails are 10ft apart and my cutting axis of the 2 blades starts 4ft from the left rail and goes to within 1 ft of the right rail leaving me with 5ft of cutting area. The log decks will feed logs from the right side of the mill. I am planning on starting with dead decks to start with and later upgrade to hyd feed.

I found on FF where some swing blade sawers placed multiple logs in the same bunk and spaced them apart in notches to gain production and was wondering if any of you had tried it or had any suggestions.

I will be setting up my mill in a stationary spot and will be adding a board drag back feature so most of the cutting will be done in the first bunk and the second bunk used when the 1st bunk is being loaded with new logs. There will be a tilted roller bed at the start of bunk 1 in the middle of the 5 ft wide cutting area that will move the logs to a roller bed that will move the logs to a X lift for stacking.
There will be a roller bed positioned 3-4 ft from the left rail that will travel the length of the rails with a 1" drop per 10ft to move the ties from the 2nd and 3rd bunks to the start of the rails where they can be loaded on to the xlift.

Does anybody have any ideas? I will try to post a picture of the proposed layout. 

[CaseyK]

 https://forestryforum.com/gallery/albums/userpics/29590/sawmill_end_rails.jpg

https://forestryforum.com/gallery/albums/userpics/29590/sawmill_rails.jpg

[CaseyK]

 

  

 

[CaseyK]

Only 6 more days until im back in the USA!!!
I think I mentioned before that the cheap 24v PWM that I had purchased worked but eventually lost speed control so I purchased the following yesterday:

Speed Control DC Motor 32 Amp Minarik XP32-12/24DC with manual off of ebay, they cost around $80-100 delivered, ordered a minarik heat sink $30 off ebay.
The drive has accel/decal/torque limit/and ircomp settings. The drive doesn't have reverseing ability but that will be taken care of from a AB 700 relay wired up in a H bridge configuration between the drive and motor. The drive manual states that it can accept a 0-10v isolated speed reference so im going to wire it to the motion card of the plc

[CaseyK]

Sorry for not updating sooner. Last hitch home it rained a lot and when it wasn't raining the crappie were biting so I didn't ge much done on the mill, but I did get the following items done:
1. Installed and configured the minarik 24v dc drives to control the speed of the (3) 24 volt wheelchair motors and they worked great, they have the ability to accel to a speed and decal to a stop and also have torque limiting.
2. Installed DC current shunt displays on the 3 motors so I could see what amperage they were producing.
3. Set up the 3 drives to have a slow and fast speed settings at around 20% and 80%.
4. Reworked the main frame up and down guides and the connectors from the 1"acme rods to the 1"drive shafts above them to eliminate any slipping.
5. Added check proxs on each of the acme rods so that if one of the rods get out of sync with the other rods the system will fault before the frame gets uneven and binds.
6. Purchased and painted an additional 20ft of rails for the system to run on bringing the total travel distance to 40ft. After allowing 5ft on each end for the saw assembly that will allow for up to a 30ft log to be cut or (2) 12.5 ft log infeed decks to configured with a 5 ft gap between the ends of the logs.
7. Moved the sawmill from the back porch to around 50 yds from the house so that its out of the way.
8. Was able to saw a few boards and the slow fast selection of the drives via the remote control worked great, it allowed me to move fast then creep into position super slow.

Got a call, will post more later.

[CaseyK]

So I got all of that done last hitch, now for my to do list for next hitch home:
1. Connect and level the rails and mill in its new position.
2. Rework the up down guides to minimize and mechanical slop.
3. Install the plc.
4. Add diodes to the plc circuits that are paralleled to the manual remote control relay card.
5. install the encoders to the up and down drive rod and the side to side acme rod.
6. Install the wireless Ethernet hub on the mill for the remote operator touch screen.
7. build the operator screens for the log optimization cut solutions depending upon log diameter, primary board selection, min board selection, cants selected, cant sizes, reject bad spot selection, min bark cut, plain saw and /or  quarter saw selection. 
8. Build the 2 tilted infeed decks and the bridge over the feedwork  rails for the logs to travel before landing on the cutting base platform. At first it will all be manual but hope to add hydraulics to center and align the logs and also clamp them to eliminate the chance of log movement while the log is being processed. 
9. Add a blade guard and chips chute on the vertical blade to direct the chips to the left of the log to combine with the horizontal blades chips.
10. Mount the laser photo eyes and wire them into the plc.
11. Add the estop pull cables to the front and rear of the machine.
12. Add a selectable board return flap to the horizontal blade frame.
13. Design a roller case for the lumber or cants to roll upon once pulled off of the stationary log for both of the infeed bunks.
14. Add a water drip system to help cool the blades.
15. Add stiffeners to the main frame to minimize any racking of the main frame as it travels down the feedwork rails.
16. Add a prox speed pick up on the feedworks drive shaft to calculate speed and position.
17. Buy a grinder and bracket for sharpening the blades while still on the machine.
18. Configure some type of chain or conveyor under the cutting bunks to remove the sawdust and finches.
19. Add an alignment laser line to assist in aligning the log and the mill.

Well as you can see I have got a long ways to go. And now I realize why some of these home made builds posted in this forumn took months and months to build. But I have truly enjoyed every bit of it, from getting the motor, buying the metal, doing some red neck engineering, cutting and welding, and wiring it up and sending it down the rails to cut its first log. Thanks for all the input, questions, and answers from all of the FF members that have posted or messaged me. Nex hitch home (month of May ) will be cut short with training and family events but im hoping as always to get the bulk of the 19 steps above done before having to go back to work and get to do some sawing to build a sawmill shed but that will be another thread. Thanks for reading.

[jueston]

14. Add a water drip system to help cool the blades.

having never built a sawmill or seen a circular saw run, i was under the impression that most circular saws did not have cooling or lube systems....

do you expect a lot of heat buildup? on the blade?