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Forum designed Block splitter - Fast build, tractor driven

Started by Timberjack5, August 28, 2020, 01:20:29 AM

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Timberjack5

 Some of you that have been following my threads know that I have a few big projects about to start.
1 / Logging winch on tractor to skidder conversion.
2 /  Harvester parts out to firewood processing mill.
However while all that's underway I have been offered a small firewood supply contact that is fairly lucrative, I've said yes and shook hands to deliver the first load in 2 weeks time. I already pretty flat out as I'm building a shed for a client which pays the final 20% balance on a Cat D6D dozer plus I've got a few things happening with my cattle and I'm starting  a few colts for another client. While I'm doing this over the next month there is not a lot of income coming in, therefore the firewood is a foot in the door to a new business that I'm getting involved in plus it's cash now. My mate has a resort and his firewood supplier has retired, he wants me to bag it in 20kg ( 44 pound ) bags already split, it works out to 350 per tonne in this way and he sells it to the people who camp or  stay in his cabins on his property. He goes through about 100 bags a week. He sells it for just over double what I get but I'm more than happy with the rate, good luck to him.
Anyway my other buddy has a lot of tree tops from where it was logged for mill logs a few years ago, I'll be able to go in just with a chainsaw but I need to build a splitter real quick from what I already have here.  I've got
* plenty of I beam 7 x3 -1/2 inch and 8x4 inch medium weight.
* cutting edge off big road grader blade
* assorted heavy steel
* enough inch and 1/4 plate to make a heavy base plate.
* tractor with 20 gallon per minute flow 2610 psi
* best condition cylinder is inch and 1/4 rod with 12 inch stroke complete with end pins.
* another cylinder that needs a bit of a tidy up is inch and 1/4 rod 2 foot stroke.
*Then I do have a bigger one 2 and 1/2 inch rod x 2 and 1/2 feet stroke.
All above cylinders are dual acting.
* 2 spool valve bank dual acting.
Got great welding gear up to 600amps, mig, tig and stick, got 100 tonne punch and shear, oxy / lpg cutting, carbon arc gouging gear. Press drill.
Lot of experience in heavy fabrication / welding / pressure welding.
I'm thinking a vertical splitter ( 3pl hitch ) as I can improve it on the fly, I've got a tip truck and some hay elevators that I might be able to convert for wood. Hoping to keep manual lifting to a minimum as the show improves.
Most thing that I need help with is working out the splitting force of tractor with available cylinders, also hoping to build something where I'm not waiting all day for the cylinder to come down to the block of wood, I've done a bit with hydraulics, replaced a few pumps on tractors, cleaned a few blocked screens, made a bypass and gone external flow on tractor, things like that but I don't know how to work out the maths on these cylinders against the flow rate apart from hooking it all up, building it on trail and error but I haven't got time to make a mistake. I'm not saying I couldn't work it out and teach myself with the internet resources however I'm busy and in a hurry, It makes a lot more sense to ask as there are people here who have a lot more experience. Please be mindful that I'm dealing with Australian Hardwood and this stuff is tough ( iron bark ) and I need to come up with the best tonnage splitting force possible with that tractor specs plus that splitter steel work needs to be tough. I've come to realise there are some very clever people on this forum in the short time that I have been a part of it and I will be certainly greatful for any advice, I can post photos as I build what you guys lead me into.
Kindest regards
Timberjack5

Satamax

By any chance, do you have an elevator mast? That would be the fastest way to build a splitter i think. Or heavy equipment stabilizers for example.

For the hydraulics, you need to know your tractor's flow in liters per minute, or GPM. And pressure.

For the cylinders, it's easy, you take the tape measure, better if you have a taylor's one. Measure the circumference of the cylinder, divide that by pi. That gives you the diameter, substract 1cm, or thereabouts for the piston's diameter.

Then for the surface PIxR² easy.

Surface by pressure gives you tonnage.

Surface x length (travel) , in cm, gives you volume, in CC,

Then flow divided by volume gives you the time it takes   to open or retract the cylinder.

HTH.

Myself, in a real hurry, i would go rotary or inertial. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_BpAhGSFWXc

Štípačka na dřevo, domácí výroba - YouTube

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5LdChUbCUcQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W5mmx6Rn3lo
French CD4 sawmill. Latil TL 73. Self moving hydraulic crane. Iveco daily 4x4 lwb dead as of 06/2020. Replaced by a Brimont TL80 CSA.

Timberjack5

Thanks Satamax, I'm not sure what an elevator last is ?
I do have a 9 tonne ( 20,000 pound) gvm or fully loaded weight,  truck that has rear stabilisers for the cherry picker man basket set up. Happy to wreck that part of truck if that's what you are taliking about.

Timberjack5


Satamax

French CD4 sawmill. Latil TL 73. Self moving hydraulic crane. Iveco daily 4x4 lwb dead as of 06/2020. Replaced by a Brimont TL80 CSA.

Satamax

French CD4 sawmill. Latil TL 73. Self moving hydraulic crane. Iveco daily 4x4 lwb dead as of 06/2020. Replaced by a Brimont TL80 CSA.

moodnacreek


62oliver

What is the barrel diameter of your cylinders? I put a 4" X 24" on mine and find it a good combination of speed and splitting force. However the wood I am usually splitting is not terribly hard to split.
Also re: the grader cutting edge, I was going to make my wedge out of that too (I'm assuming that's what you have in mind). I was convinced by the guys on here that it was not needed as that cutting edge is not very friendly to work with. I ended up just making a wedge out of a 12" x 12" x 1" piece of plate. Took about an hour with a 7" grinder and an aggressive disc. Has been great and if needed it is easy to touch up.
Husqvarna 266, Case 90xt, JD310C, TJ240E, 02 Duramax

Timberjack5

Lot of very good ideas here fellas. 62Oliver, I'm hearing you on the wedge, I'll scrap the cutting edge idea, I was already thinking along your lines so yes I'll run with that. What sort of tractor are you running that off, if it's a tractor or what is your pressure and flow if you know it .
Satamax the rotary looks good too. 
Moodna I had a look at the power split inter, very nice.

Haleiwa

If you have to deliver in bags, bagging will take longer than splitting if you split onto a pile.  Make a horizontal frame high enough that the splitter will push the wood over the top of the bag (you have to make arms to hold the bag in position).  That way you only have to lift it one time and gravity will fill the bag.  Use the biggest cylinder and make a wedge on each end so that you can split in both directions. The ram will have to slide along a track with the cylinder rod underneath it. If you have help, one can feed the splitter while the other pulls away the full bags and slides in the empty ones.
Socialism is people pretending to work while the government pretends to pay them.  Mike Huckabee

mike_belben

Surplus center.com has a drp down tab. Click technical help then hydraulic then calculators.  

I think a box wedge splitter with dragback with a hyd lift ramp is the way to go for very hard stuff. Or very large staff.  Its gonna limit the load to about 3 cuts per stroke instead of say 8 or more.  With force limited you dont need to designed for rare very high pressure situations.  
Praise The Lord

mike_belben

Praise The Lord

Timberjack5

Haleiwa
Yes I agree with the bag loading, like the double acting, yes wife can help on the less heavy tasks.

Timberjack5

Mike, yes I'll be cutting with a chainsaw initially until I can get one of these circular saws up and running.

62oliver

Quote from: Timberjack5 on August 28, 2020, 07:47:28 AM
Lot of very good ideas here fellas. 62Oliver, I'm hearing you on the wedge, I'll scrap the cutting edge idea, I was already thinking along your lines so yes I'll run with that. What sort of tractor are you running that off, if it's a tractor or what is your pressure and flow if you know it .


I usually run it off the aux hydraulics on my Case 90xt skid steer, think flow might be about 16-20 GPM? Not sure. Sometimes I hook it to the John Deere 310C, the splitter runs a little faster on that.
Husqvarna 266, Case 90xt, JD310C, TJ240E, 02 Duramax

Hilltop366

I'm thinking you are going to be splitting stuff fairly small for bagged campfire wood so probably lots of re- splitting which makes me think that a box wedge or vertical splitter would fit best.

Eastonmade Box Wedge Specific 22-28 WHAT IS IT??? - YouTube

Eastonmade; AXIS Low Down!!! - YouTube


The issues with running a splitter off of a tractor hydraulics is in order to get the maximum flow rates you have to run the tractor at the rated speed which seem wasteful for splitting wood I use my tractor splitter but only run at a bit over ½ throttle, it is slow but I'm just splitting for myself where a splitter like my brother has with it's own engine (its only 5.5 hp) and a two stage pump is way faster and it frees up the tractor to move logs and pallets around.

mike_belben

Here is a compilation of home made box wedges mostly with dragback.  I would watch it a few times to see what suits your iron pile.  We can worry about the hydraulics once you nail down the design a bit.  

Homemade Automatic Log Splitting Wood Processor Machines | Log Splitter Wood & Firewood Splitting - YouTube



Praise The Lord

Timberjack5

Thanks Hilltop
"The issues with running a splitter off of a tractor hydraulics is in order to get the maximum flow rates you have to run the tractor at the rated speed which seem wasteful for splitting wood I use my tractor splitter but only run at a bit over ½ throttle, it is slow but I'm just splitting for myself where a splitter like my brother has with it's own engine (its only 5.5 hp) and a two stage pump is way faster and it frees up the tractor to move logs and pallets around"

Yes I catching on to this after studying flow rates a bit. Unless I had some massive hydraulic pump running off the pto there seems to be a waste of power I agree

mike_belben

You can size the pump for a lower speed operation or rig up a pulley to overdrive so the tractor can run lower rpm. The steady state ag governors should be pretty happy to fuel up hard and maintain rpm any time load drags it down.  
Praise The Lord

Timberjack5

Thanks for the input Mike, I'm in the thinking process at the moment, plus I'm going over my bits on the farm, thinking of stuff that I haven't seen for a while that's laying in the grass, you fellas have given me serious education and I'm processing thought atm.

Hilltop366

There were some vertical PTO splitters built around here 40 years ago, I still see one once in a while. They were made with a chain and sprocket to speed the pump up and a foot pedal to control the ram, I believe they used a chain and sprocket to step up the speed so there was very little side load on the pump shaft compared to belts as most pumps are not designed for side load. Another option would be to use a jack shaft with 2 mounted bearings and a flexible coupling or a pump designed for a PTO.

To design one I would start with the available horsepower of your tractor at the rpm you want to run it and select a pump size to suit those specs. I would also be tempted to use a splitter type 2 stage pump and over size it a bit so it would not have to spin so fast to get the desired flow rate / ram cycle time.

Another thought is you will have the tractor hydraulics available to you for running other things like a block lift and conveyer.

Timberjack5

Thanks Hilltop, you've brought up some very good points and it's all in alliance with where my thinking is going.

Timberjack5

Update Plan :
Next weekend we are going to cut a truck load of blocks with chainsaw, bring them back home. There is a hire splitter available which is a very good Australian built machine. I've booked it to hire a few weekends away. I can pick it up late Friday n drop back early Monday and they will charge just a day rate. The machine costs $10,000 to buy new and is much like the power split International that Moodna recommended. A conveyor on a new one is an extra $4000. 
https://www.superaxe.com.au/superaxe-ws3150/
The hire model doesn't have the conveyor but does have the 13hp upgrade Honda that is required for conveyor model. It has a 2 speed pump. Anyway it will get me out of trouble while creating some dollars to turn over plus it gives me a chance to try a good quality model while I decide what I'm building ( takes the pressure off a bit )
I'll make sure I've got blocks and bags ready to maximise the hire time.

Satamax

French CD4 sawmill. Latil TL 73. Self moving hydraulic crane. Iveco daily 4x4 lwb dead as of 06/2020. Replaced by a Brimont TL80 CSA.

Timberjack5


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