Mr. Franzen, The Chainsaw World wants to meet you!!!!!!

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Let see, I'm right here in the middle of the ole USA. People would come from all directions to see that. Maybe a good idea to put one in my shop for a demo? lol I might even use it on my chains! Looks good. Just think of all the potential buyers. Whatcha think Scott?
 
Here is The Man himself, a real nice person. I noticed Stens, who he is
affiliated with now, has come out with a new line of bar/chain, other
than their Carlton/GB line up. Wildly enough the name is "Silver Streak"
I quizzed several Stens reps over that one. According to one, Oregon let
the Hold on the copyright or whatever on the Brand "Silver Streak"
lapse and they grabbed it up. If that is true, then that is high stupidity
on the corporate level. I may be way off base there, but I don't think so.

Maybe Oregon Engineer may have a comment or two on that, then again maybe he won't...............

Anyway, looking at the "Silver Streak" chain, it is Trilink, which has the
"Stihl" tiger striped drive link tang, which I thought was copywrite protected,
trademark or whatever as well. The bars didn't look too shabby

Anyway, back to Mr. Franzen, he said he sold a machine today, he says things have been going real well.

Other than that, and me catching up with old friends, the Expo was a bust this year, cold and raining, so the outdoor demos were non existant.

I invited Mr. Franzen to check out Arboristsite, and told him I started a thread in his honor. The machine does a good job, once you know how to use it.
 
What sort of setup is there for each chain and how much baby sitting is involved with its operation?


It has a setting for each pitch, you type in the drive link count, you can choose to engage the depth gage grinder or not, doesn't take too long. With a rocked out chain, I just do the thing in stages, which is kindof what I do on the conventional grinder. With time, you can run the machine, and do other repairs, but it takes a while to get the hang of it. It is not quite as
hands free as they want to make it sound.

Ideally, the place I worked for in Louisville thought the front salesmen could
run the machine, which is not realistic. As you have to know what angles
you are trying to achieve, and understand the machine, so the machine will
not run itself, but with time, be a valuable tool. Larger dealerships could
find a place for it.
 
It has a setting for each pitch, you type in the drive link count, you can choose to engage the depth gage grinder or not, doesn't take too long. With a rocked out chain, I just do the thing in stages, which is kindof what I do on the conventional grinder. With time, you can run the machine, and do other repairs, but it takes a while to get the hang of it. It is not quite as
hands free as they want to make it sound.

Ideally, the place I worked for in Louisville thought the front salesmen could
run the machine, which is not realistic. As you have to know what angles
you are trying to achieve, and understand the machine, so the machine will
not run itself, but with time, be a valuable tool. Larger dealerships could
find a place for it.

That's about what I thought. At the shop we do a decent amount of chains every week 30-75 a week depending on the time of year.
And at about 10 minutes a chain that's a lot time I could be doing something else.
It'd be great to get one of these machines, but it would take at least 2-5 years for it to pay for it self.
 
Mine is called Cousin ITT

What sort of setup is there for each chain and how much baby sitting is involved with its operation?

Well it does save time........ Setup is usually near a minute or so depending on condition of chain, And like Fish mentioned if the chain is real bad it might prefer 2 or even 3 passes to get it back to sharp. I have mine set up for a double hit if I had a choice I would have Mr Fransen make the first hit more gentle like I did with my old grinders and the second hit the finish and clean hit it would be easier on the chain that way. Back to the time issue now that we have it set up and running we no longer are backlogged on chain grinding which makes the customers happier. All customers are real impressed with the quality of grind they get. as well as getting lots of ooooo's and ahaaaaa's while watching it I should charge admission lol. My shop is not climate controlled (Air Conditioned) and the real humid days itt would screw up from time to time I have readjusted for climate conditions in the back of itt and it did improve itt's mistakes. average grind time for a 72 driver chain is 5-6 minutes counting initial fussing with adjustments.



Scott
 
We had one at the shop I used to work at. In fact, the service manager was one of the testimonials on the Franzen demo video at the expo this year. Given you have a large enough work load for the machine, I guess it can pay off in time. The customers loved having the chain sharpened "while they wait;" something the service writer could setup and and have running while he's actually ringing-up the customer. This is a huge benefit over pulling a tech. off a job, and having him setup and run a manual grinder. Unfortunately, I never learned to run the machine. Go figure...
 
You must have worked at "Beard's" then, I watched the little commercial too.

After driving on I-65 in the pouring rain this morning, I remember how I hated that commute....
 
Went to the Expo on Friday, this is Mr. Franzen's newest product, an Automatic Mower Blade Sharpener, an impressive machine.

View attachment 204982


Here is it doing a mulch blade.



204982d1319988729-expo-001-jpg
 
In the 2nd pic, on the left is the dressing tool that it hits from time to time. It is programmed by entering the blade Part number into the computer, in real world application, I am not sure how that would play out though. with all the various aftermarket blades, and even the
huge variations within the oem brands, the database would have to be big, and then that is only if you knew the part number.
 

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