Mandrel shaft length (circle saw)

[Jeff]

Absolutely!  Sawdust removal is number one on the list of things to think about in my opinion too. Time spent shoveling or sweeping is non-productive and costs you money.  Our system could be better. Our west mill is much better then mine. It has two barn cleaners. One makes a loop around and under the mill. It travels over top of one that is directly under the head rig. That one takes sawdust up and out. You can be almost anywhere and sweep stray sawdust directly into the loop.

[smwwoody]

Ok tell me about these "barn cleaners"   I don't think I have ever seen one.  I was thinking about a pit under the head saw with a blower piped to a trailer out side.  I allready have a blower on my other mill that will stay in place and the blower on the edger will move to the new mill with the edger.

Woody

[Ron Wenrich]

Barn cleaners are what they use underneath a debarker.  They're also used to take manure out of barns.  If you centralize your dust, you'll only need one blower.  It can be any place that you want.  

Are you putting in a chipper?  If not, you should be looking at doing that sometime in the future.  1 Mbf of lumber produces about 2 tons of slabs.  At $20-25/ton, that ends up as a pretty good chunk of change by the end of the day.  Pays for the help.

Make sure you can easily manage your slabs.  A lot of time can be wasted moving your waste.  Not a good idea.  If you're not putting in a chipper, build your mill so that you can add it later.

[smwwoody]

The chipper will come later.  right now I use a automatic slab sheer that cuts them to fire wood length and once a week we band them on pallets and sell for fire wood.  $35 per pallet pays for the time to handle them.  

I figure I can add the chipper where the slab sheer will be setting  since the only want clean chips here it will come at the same time as the debarker

[mitch]

Meadows Mills has detailed drawings of their saw mills that might be of some help

http://www.meadowsmills.com/dimensions.htm

They show 46" from the inside of the fast saw collar to the outside of the left bearing housing with an additional 15" or so for the drive pulley.
You probably are not using feed belts so that frees up 8-10" of mandrel space.
Good luck with your venture and post some images so that we can learn from your efforts.