Baker 3674

[Walnut Beast]

What a Beast. Looks pretty nice! 36” through the throat and 74 hp Diesel 

[Walnut Beast]

It’s a Deutz diesel. Throat height 18” 🤔

[Walnut Beast]

Sawmill has a 4x12 I beam construction. I doubt your going to tow this bad boy with a 1/2 ton truck at 12k for the 20 ft model and 13k for the 24ft. Several opinions of electric and also a Cummins motor also

[Bruno of NH]

That's a beast of a mill.

[SawyerTed]

It’s a beast and the price doesn’t seem crazy for the capacity and hp.  Although it is more than I can currently afford.

[Southside]

They build nice mills.  Personally I don't prefer the setworks / hydraulic set up the sawyer operates or I would own one.  Now if I could find a computer guy to marry my Super 70 controls to this mill then it would be in my shed.  

[tmbrcruiser]

I have a 3650E with the 4x12 I beam frame, I love the mill. I think the set works is accurate and simple to run. I have not run other set works so my knowledge is limited. You won't find a company better than Baker for support and service.

[ladylake]

 I like simple that  works good.   It's amazing how complicated they build things that don't have to be .   Steve

[Walnut Beast]

That’s a very nice mill tmbrcruiser. Thanks for the feedback on your mill , support and service. The 3674 could be my next mill next year. I agree with Southside on the setworks. My personal opinion is TimberKing and Woodmizer are on another level in refinement with there set works compared to Cooks and Baker. I’ve had the manuals emailed to me on both to look at. With the technology and software I’m surprised they couldn’t be a little more refined. (Maybe they will read some potential customers concerns). 

[Bruno of NH]

They won't refine if they are selling mills.
Woodmizer should have a chain turner and joy stick controls on the lt 35 and up.
No doubt it would be cheaper for them in the long run.
To many options cuts down efficiency. 

[Southside]

To me the difference in operating my 70 vs a Baker is akin to running a fly by wire excavator, plumbed with a 3 rd valve on the bucket, vs a direct hydraulic backhoe.  Baker makes an awesome machine, but not having to remove my hands from the controls and the pattern choice in the WM setworks with permanent and temporary reference points literally a button push away, make sawing so much easier.  Of course that sort of convenience requires 5, yes 5, ECU's on my sawmill, but that is another story. 

[ladylake]

 
 I'd bet you'd saw just as fast on a Baker, seems like Baker won the last shootout.  It's all what you get used to.  The pattern mode might work good with great logs with no stess, but when you get into logs with stress, bad spots. etc that all goes away.  Steve

[Southside]

I saw plenty of poor quality and stress filled gum, poplar, SYP. The temporary reference points and switching between modes allows me to never have to deal with the last board figuring. It's already baked in. 

Like I said, combine a Baker with the HMI setworks, which is nothing like what you see on a 40 or 50, and it would far exceed anything out there. 

[Larry]

Can you explain HMI setworks a bit?  Human machine interface?

[Southside]

Yes, that's what it stand for.  Now I don't have a plug or anything that I need to stick into my body to make it work, but I guess it was their fancy way of giving it a name.  

It takes a couple of weeks to memorize the functions, at least it did for me, as everything can do more than one function depending on which mode you are in.  Two four way joysticks with push buttons, a center 4 way big button, and pull triggers on each joystick, then a series of soft touch buttons on the sides of the visual screen.  You can customize what some of the buttons do depending on which end of the mill you work from, or even prefer. Lube rate, head travel rate, band speed FPM can all be adjusted here.  Some functions, like holding a temporary reference or height from the bed, take a combination of pushing two buttons in sequence, but you can do that while the saw is advancing in the cut so there is no lost time.  

I am NOT a tech guy by any means, my laptop is 10 years old, and I keep buying the same phone when the one I have dies, but this system is laid out so an equipment operator can learn it and make it run quite well.  

The setworks has manual, auto down, auto up, and pattern mode.  The really nice thing is that I can be in any of those modes, and do something completely manual, and not loose where I was, without doing anything else.  So say for example I have a log with a big butt flare on one end - useless, no lumber value, but it will cause an issue sitting on the rail or with clearing it.  I open the first face with a couple of cuts, turn the log 90 degrees, run the head down to the end, manually set the height where I want it to just cut the flare off and get rid of the issue, turn another 90 degrees so I am opposite my first cut, and the setworks will bring me to the next predetermined cut height.  Never had to push a button, just pull back or push forward on the left joystick to get where I want to be.  There is a digital display right in front of me that tells me band height to the 32nd and I can make the saw go to any whole number value with the push of one button and a trigger as well.  

Pattern mode allows me to enter any value for each board I cut and to stop at a pre-determined height.  You can set 16 patterns and it's fast to change them.  So say I am cutting pine logs that have some grade lumber in them.  I can tell the saw to cut 1" boards for the first several jacket boards to get clear grade from them, then as I get into some knots cut 2" stock for dimensional lumber, and stop at 8" above the deck as I want 8" x whatever posts to send to the treatment plant.  One log, three different markets, just push a single button and get to sawing.  Say the log is really clear and I want to grab a few more grade 1" boards instead of 2" stock, no problem, switch to auto down and cut a couple more boards, end up at 8 3/8", hit the upper left button and the right trigger and the saw is at 8", make the cut and the you have the 8" target done.  

It really is a saw that needs an edger behind it to maximize the speed it is capable of.  I say that not meaning the saw is in anyway slow, rather it can saw so quickly that tossing flitches onto the arms would really be a waste of time.  Having said that I do toss pine quarters onto the arms when making vertical grain flooring blanks, but that is a different discussion, and technically I don't toss them the turner and clamp do the work for me.  I want my lumber to be just about perfect coming off the green side of things because almost all of what I saw I end up either re-sawing into clapboard siding or drying and running through my planer and moulder, so the closer it is to perfection the faster those functions go.  

If we are targeting a specific size then I grade saw through the log to get down to my target cant which will be over the desired final size, the amount over depends on what we are making.  The edger operator recovers small flitches into random or non target lumber and it may have a home or go into inventory.  From there they target flitches into what we are making.  In the case of clapboard siding it's to the size we need and the lumber then heads to the re-saw to be tapered.  If it's going to dry then we allow an oversize for shrink and movement and I grade saw until the cant gets me to the oversize target then blanks as we call them skip the edger and go right to the sticker pile.  It's a hybrid way of doing things, but it's fast.

It's nice because the setworks is flexible enough and powerful enough to let me do that without taking my hands off of the joysticks.  On top of it I can use the cruise control and take my hands off if I want to toss a slab off the rollers onto the recovery table so nobody else has to mess with it or if I want to help the edger operator if the third person is not there for whatever reason I can do so while the saw continues through the cut.  

The same controls will also run a log deck along with the loader arms but I don't have mine setup that way. 

[Walnut Beast]

Wow. Thanks Southside for explaining the different features. I wasn’t aware there where so many. That system with the joystick controls on the Super 70 look absolutely awesome. Sounds like they work that way as well 👍

[YellowHammer]

I agree, the joystick controls of the LT70 DCS and the hands joystick features is pretty impressive.  Its like Accuset on steroids, without having to touch anything except the joysticks, which is useful because they advertised the LT70 Super as 6 times faster than my LT40, so it takes a control system that's equally faster.  

This doesn't mean its harder to operate, I was sawing the other day, getting into a rhythm and think I actually fell asleep while running it.  Seriously.  Move a couple joysticks, squeeze a couple buttons, and the boards just keep coming back.  When I realized what had happened, I reached up and turned the key off and walked away.

[Walnut Beast]

Yellowhammer & Southside it seems to me after you run the joystick controls it would be difficult to go in a different direction without them. I didn’t realize there was as many as Southside mentioned. If it’s anything like running a pilot controlled machine. Well it would be difficult to get away from 😂

[Southside]

I have some pilot heavy equipment - this is a step above, fly by wire.  

[terrifictimbersllc]

Don't you have to take a hand off the joystick to go from pattern to autodown (hand goes to soft button on screen next to joystick)? 

I agree you can go between manual and one of the three modes via joystick but havent found a way to go from one mode (autodown, autoup, pattern) and another of these without reaching a finger over to the soft buttons.

What is an example of a programmable button (not talking about the 4 preset choices for running the mill from one end or another)

[YellowHammer]

The fast hydraulics and joystick toe boards lets me use sawing techniques I've never used before.

For example:
When I'm grade sawing 4/4, I (almost) never switch out of pattern mode, just turn it on and off with the joystick buttons and bed function trigger.

Since I'm grade sawing, I raise and lower the toeboards on most opening faces anyway, so adjusting the log height to the band in pattern mode, instead of the band to the log height is faster while I'm adjusting the angle for the opening face.  

When I'm quartersawing, I'll just use the autodown mode and only switch to pattern for the last wedge.

With the dragback shelf modification, I can just pull back up to a half dozen boards at once anyway, such as when quartersawng, so it can be a snoozer if I'm not careful.  The only time I have to take my hands off the joysticks is to stack lumber if I don't have a helper.

[woodduckhunter]

best thing that ever happened to the setworks on my baker is that they quit working one day while i was running cants that had to be cut.  continued sawing without it for a couple days, parts came in, never installed.  about to though to help it sell.  come to find out, a lot of people run the bakers without them. when you get good with it, you are much faster.  i think there's a plastic bag around it in the sawmill shootout videos.

[Walnut Beast]

They have updated the setworks when I had talked to them last year from the previous setworks