Damaged Stihl carbide chain!

Greetings

Just look what happened to the carbide chain I use on my Echo 341



The carbide tips just unglued from the chain. Damned! This was an expensive chain ! Worked for a couple of hours, never hit the ground, stone or metal with this chain. The saw is used mainly to prune limbs in orchard trees like citrus, plums, apples and stuff.

Luckily, the chainsaw dealer is a nice guy and replaced the portion of damaged chain.

Is this a frequent occurrence in carbide tipped chains?

Cheers

Whoa!!

I'm sure that like anything, somebody had a bad day on the production line, and somebody had to be the one opening the box with that chain in it.

I have seen one Carbide chain do that, but it was used for cutting a vent into the side of a Metal building and hit a substantial chunk of Iron upright.
Stuff happens I reckon.

Hows come you have gone to carbide for Orchard lopping?

Plain old RMC would be faster and still plenty durable even with the dust and sand you have over there.

Just wondering.

Stay safe!
Dingeryote

dingeryote said:

Whoa!!

I'm sure that like anything, somebody had a bad day on the production line, and somebody had to be the one opening the box with that chain in it.

I have seen one Carbide chain do that, but it was used for cutting a vent into the side of a Metal building and hit a substantial chunk of Iron upright.
Stuff happens I reckon.

Hows come you have gone to carbide for Orchard lopping?

Plain old RMC would be faster and still plenty durable even with the dust and sand you have over there.

Just wondering.

Stay safe!
Dingeryote

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not to mention you get 2 rmc versus 1 rescue chain

Nup not for me, I use this stuff a fair bit, Stihl rapid duro and yours don't look quite like mine??
It will eat dirt n loose rocks all day, try n chew any solid brickwork ya may loose a tooth. Hmm your chains rakers look a bit different.







Bom dia, As coisas vão indo bem. Como vão as coisas no seu mundo?

Luv Portugal I reckon you got great country there and lots of gums and wattles eh.

Never used a carbide chainsaw chain but I have replaced carbide tips on large circular blades. Looks like the silver solder failed. Carbide is tough stuff but it will chip and shatter if you hit something hard. Perhaps you hit an unseen rock or nail.

CentaurG2 said:

Never used a carbide chainsaw chain but I have replaced carbide tips on large circular blades. Looks like the silver solder failed. Carbide is tough stuff but it will chip and shatter if you hit something hard. Perhaps you hit an unseen rock or nail.

Click to expand...

Carbide is far from tough, it's just hard.

derwoodii said:

Nup not for me, I use this stuff a fair bit, Stihl rapid duro and yours don't look quite like mine??
It will eat dirt n loose rocks all day, try n chew any solid brickwork ya may loose a tooth. Hmm your chains rakers look a bit different.

Bom dia, As coisas vão indo bem. Como vão as coisas no seu mundo?

Luv Portugal I reckon you got great country there and lots of gums and wattles eh.

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Holy smokes! That chain can chew through darn near anything!:jawdrop:

Yup I luv this stuff beats swinging an axe any day. Here's a few other pix and some thoughts & discussion about root pruning.

http://www.arboristsite.com/showthread.php?t=105193

Have you seen the Demo saws with the root cutting blades? I've never tried one, but I'm tempted.
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dingeryote said:

Whoa!!

Hows come you have gone to carbide for Orchard lopping?

Just wondering.

Stay safe!
Dingeryote

Click to expand...

Thanks for the question. I just got tired of sharpening chains after cutting dry limbs. To tell you the truth, carbide tip chains cut a bit slower, but I am getting used to the idea that I do not have to sharpen the chain by the end of the day.

derwoodii said:

Bom dia, As coisas vão indo bem. Como vão as coisas no seu mundo?

Luv Portugal I reckon you got great country there and lots of gums and wattles eh.

Click to expand...

Thanks for the Portuguese. Indeed lots of Eucalyptus. We produce a lot of paper pulp, almost exclusively from Eucalyptus wood.

We use the carbide style like that one in the fire dept for venting roofs. they cut good but only last one venthole before starting to strip all the carbides off. i guess they make full carbide chains but we have only used the glue on style.

these Rescue saws live very tough lives picture taking your saw and climbing on your roof and cutting a 4'x4' section right through shingles, nails and all. also keep in mind it is ussually so smokey that you need a Air pack so you can breath.

SkippyKtm said:

Have you seen the Demo saws with the root cutting blades? I've never tried one, but I'm tempted.
>

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Yes seen them and curious too. But cuttin wheels tie you to one kinda attachment I,m happy with my 310 as when/often needed I flip off the tungsten bar n chain and put on a normal 20 inch 3/8.
Any hoo watch the chain in these vids seems as good as if not better than the wheel.

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We use carbide cutting edges on the front end loader buckets where I work. I suppose there are different types of carbide, but this stuff is brittle. Abrasion wise , it outlasts a normal edge almost three to one, but if you hook a chunk of concrete or steel, bye bye carbide. The edges aren't solid carbide, it looks like it's welded or sprayed on ????
We also have grader blades for plowing snow, which is carbide sandwiched between two steel plates. Easy to know when it's wore out ....you see sparks. Carbide doesn't spark.

Your damaged chain looks like the Stihl PD (Pico Duro) carbide tipped chain that comes standard on the 230C (lo-profile) saw. The carbide tooth tips will chip or peel off if they snag on something really hard or solid. The silver-solder joint that holds it in place is also weakened under high heat. Stihl sells (or has sold in the past) three other types of carbide chain. The RD (Rapid Duro) is designed for dirty wood but not fire/rescue. This one gets used (misused?) a lot for fire/rescue because it is cheaper than RDS or RDR. RDS is no longer in the Stihl catalog. It has a carbide insert that is soldered to both a left and right tooth, so it is more durable, but chip clearance suffers. The current fire/rescue chain is RDR, which looks like a stronger version of RD. I priced RD and RDR recently -- 72 DL, 3/8": $200 for RD and $360 for RDR. Someone gave me a bucket full of badly damaged 60-link RD chains and I harvested enough good teeth to make up 8 or 10 loops with 72 DL.
Day before yesterday I sawed out 13 stumps below ground level. The chain is still sharp enough to pull out nice chips.

Using carbide chain to alleviate sharpening the chain isn't gonna solve any of your problems. If you learn how to sharpen a regular chain properly, and trust me... it will be waaaayyyyyyy easier to limb/prune trees in your orchards.

Carbide chain has it's niche, and it ain't in orchards...

Gary

GASoline71 said:

If you learn how to sharpen a regular chain properly, and trust me... it will be waaaayyyyyyy easier to limb/prune trees in your orchards.

Carbide chain has it's niche, and it ain't in orchards...

Gary

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Undoubtedly the chisel or semi chisel chains I hand sharpen cut faster then a carbide tip chain, but the dealer suggested me a price I couldn't resist and this was my first time on a carbide tip chain, so I had to try it!