Problem with my Double bar 10 HP elect.

[camel2019]

Maybe a knife behind the bars and chain kinda like a circular saw mill that’s thicker then the bar/chain combo but level with the bottom side of the bars?

 

[FabianRW]

Basically you have two problems. The first is the alignment, you need everything super accurate for chainsaw milling, so once it goes out a bit it'll get worse and worse, so stop immediately if that happens.
The second is the power/torque for what you're cutting and for this I suggest using a skip chain.
Sharpening of chain has to be spot on for milling, that is the most common issue. Also any twist or bend in the bar, the bar has to be dressed every so often.
Last of all, during cutting the speed of chain should not slow down too much, you want it to cut without having to force it, a skip chain and proper sharpening to around 10° will achieve this. There is also hyper skip chain, you could get quite a big bar with 10hp and cut big stuff with that much power so long as you keep up the chain speed using skip tooth chain.
An electric chainsaw sharpener with rotational adjustment in both directions is going to make things a lot easier.

 

[Javillonian]

The first is the alignment, you need everything super accurate for chainsaw milling

Trust me , this setup is super ridged and super adjustable, the bar (s) are running on absolute parallel planes to the track. I've checked and double checked using different methods and have never had to even loosen a bolt for adjustment since the original adjustment.

I suggest using a skip chain

I've tried full skip at stock angel, 10, 5, 0, angles, and a hyper skip milling chain. They all cut about the same in my opinion. The 0 degree did make a very noticeable difference on jamming from dust against the bar. I think it pushed the dust straight down the kerf instead of to the side. (think snowplow)

speed of chain should not slow down too much

That's the beauty of electric motors they either run at rated rpm or they stall
I've played with it enough to know it's the double bar, to much space for dust to collect and eventually jam, also if the cut kerf has a tendency to close up behind the bar it's really hard to keep it wedged up and not pinch the bar because of the wide width. I'm moving on, I've already mounted up a single bar, it's ready to go just waiting for the new sprockets which will be here Monday.

 

[BobL]

You don't happened to have a VFD on hand? If you were a bit closer you could have tried a 7.5HP Honeywell VFD I HAVE sitting in my shed. I know your motor is 10HP but you could still have run the motor with it as I doubt youR the motor is developing anywhere near the 10 horses on a 24" wide log.

Apart from being able to run at different speeds running a motor from a VFD has number of benefits. Controlled starts nd stops s better for bearings etc., and If any vibe develops the frequency can be adjusted up or down (sometimes only a change of a few Hz is needed) to reduce the vibe. When I retired I planned to get 3P power installed to my house and shop but decided to spend the $$ ob VFDs. I now have 10 of of them in my shop (MW and WW lathes, metal mill, drill press, 2 grinders, WW bandsaw, large belt sander DUst extractor and and shop extractor fan) even if I had 3P power in my shop I would have about half of these machines on VFDs..

 

[Javillonian]

You don't happened to have a VFD on hand? If you were a bit closer you could have tried a 7.5HP Honeywell VFD I HAVE sitting in my shed. I know your motor is 10HP but you could still have run the motor with it as I doubt youR the motor is developing anywhere near the 10 horses on a 24" wide log.

Apart from being able to run at different speeds running a motor from a VFD has number of benefits. Controlled starts nd stops s better for bearings etc., and If any vibe develops the frequency can be adjusted up or down (sometimes only a change of a few Hz is needed) to reduce the vibe. When I retired I planned to get 3P power installed to my house and shop but decided to spend the $$ ob VFDs. I now have 10 of of them in my shop (MW and WW lathes, metal mill, drill press, 2 grinders, WW bandsaw, large belt sander DUst extractor and and shop extractor fan) even if I had 3P power in my shop I would have about half of these machines on VFDs..

Sounds way more complicated than is necessary.

I'll throw your quote back at ya, (Ha, Ha) , I have one on a 3 HP gear motor and loved it. Have you or did you ever consider a phase converter? I'm 10 miles from the nearest 3 ph so I purchased a rotary converter many rears ago, it's rated up to 30 hp. I used to run it daily for a couple hours on a 20 hp sander, has always ran great. I did put a voltage stabilizer downstream from it when I had some more sensitive cnc equipment going. Just picked up my new sprockets at the post office, can't wait to get'm on.

 

[BobL]

I'll throw your quote back at ya, (Ha, Ha) , I have one on a 3 HP gear motor and loved it. Have you or did you ever consider a phase converter? I'm 10 miles from the nearest 3 ph so I purchased a rotary converter many rears ago, it's rated up to 30 hp. I used to run it daily for a couple hours on a 20 hp sander, has always ran great. I did put a voltage stabilizer downstream from it when I had some more sensitive cnc equipment going. Just picked up my new sprockets at the post office, can't wait to get'm on.

We wife and our 2 dogs live on 1/8th of an acre 1 mile from the CBD of a 2.5 million population city. The house covers about half the block and the biggest shop my city council will let me have is 450 sqft so I have very little room in my shop - there's a very narrow figure-8 walk track around the inside of the shop otherwise every it's crammed with "Stuff" but every . In that space I have a 2 small lathes, a small mill, welding bay, small furnace, drill press 3 grinders WW bandsaw, MW bandsaw, Tables saw with router extension table, mitre saw, belt sander, planer/thicknesser, 9 chainsaws and 3 chainsaw mills. My compressor and dust extractor are located in sound proof enclosures outside the shop. My Wife has her own jewellery making bench in there although it's mostly covered with my stuff. Noise is a serious issue with neighbours who will complain to the city council at the drop of a hat. We don't have enough electrical power to the house to run anything very big (my biggest shop machines are 4HP) and the 9 VFDs take up far less room than a phase converter. It also gets hot here (last summer we had 14 days over 105F, and an additional 35 days over 95, some nights did not go below 85F)) so I have an air conditioner in the shop and 4 split system air conditioners up in the house. In the middle of summer our 6kW solar PV system covers us for most days but we run a couple of ACs overnight so we're importing power to run those. I have a small storage area under the house that is about 4ft6" high and its crawl on ends and knees to get around under there.

At my mate's tree lopper yard about 20 miles away where I mill timber there's more space (about 2.5 acres) but that has to garage about 15 vehicles, a massive wood chip pile, a bunch of sea containers, and 1/4 acre of logs and lumber. There is one large 1/4 acre shed that has very little electrical power, a few 10A 240V single outlets and one dodgy 10A 415V 3P power point. There's a bit of a shop inside the large shed its chaotic and tools are never in the same place for more than a day of two, or broken, or blunt, so I prefer to make/repair stuff at my shop..It's a leased yard so getting a power upgrade is problematic as it's a year by year lease. Urban sprawl will see the area turned into suburbs in a year or two.

 

[Javillonian]

I got the new sprockets installed today, had to have the chain shortened by nine drivers. I recalculated the chain speed and I get 3620ft per min. It works great, I made ten passes thru 22" log and no packing. I do have to take back something I said earlier about not seeing any difference in how the different chains cut. With this new setup I started out with a full skip that I had filed to 5 deg and it cut ok but was leaving a series of ripples every foot or so, the ripples would last for about 6 inches. Almost like the chain would chatter, made a very uneven surface, so I tried the hyper skip that I have (9inches between teeth) and not only did it cut way faster but it didn't form the ripples, it made a nice finish, so I'm really happy now.

 

[blades]

that hyper skip at 5 or 10 deg?

 

[Javillonian]

that hyper skip at 5 or 10 deg?

The book says 10, I've not put a file to it yet.

 

[Houndsong]

Javillonian, do you think the width of the double bar was the culprit and the single width bar allows the debris to exit over the top and bottom of the kerf as well as the chain exit points of the kerf, and fall into the kerf behind the bar?

 

[Lightning Performance]

This relates directly to chip jamming up on the back side of the bar in tulip poplar. Never had this issue with other wood and I've never slabbed cottonwood. Likely it will do the same thing with it's fibrous nature.

Went out milling some poplar this past month and the bigger bars aka: 3002 ES41"wn compared to the smaller mount 3003 GB40" roller nose jammed the chip more on the back side. The wider bar even with a new loop of RS on it tends to jam more chip imho than a lesser bar. The only real difference between the two is about an inch in length plus the taller height in profile. They both run 404 chain. Now my 660 is ported and a still near stock 084 the power is near equal but the big saw pulls down to lower RPMs in the cut. The 084 needed an 8 pin to clear chip better so its telling me the slower chain speed is a direct correlation between chip jamming and chain speed. I found on most chip jams I'm the problem by causing the slow chain speeds during my cut with too much forward pressure. That said if your able to run higher rpms or a bigger rim most of the low rpm jams went away on the same chain in the same wood. It was pulling mostly chip not dust so it wasn't caused by a dull chain. The dull chains on shorter bars running 050 375 will walk right up out of the backside rail and lock right up if you bog it down at all. Making the chain more aggressive plus being razor sharp seems to cure all these issues buy pulling and clearing larger chips from the bar face area. I see dust feeding back from the exit area and running back into the feed side when my cutters start to dull.

Odd bit to note. The chain went dull when it caught something like dirty bark or whatever and the effect was instant. The saw slowed on it's forward progression and the dust started feeding right back into the chain feed side. Things started to heat up at that point as expected.
Also noticed the cutters didn't dull nearly as fast once the "clean" bark was stripped on the far side of my log. Guess these tulip poplar tend to hold sand and dust grown in the bark like black oak and others do. Having a deflector on top might cure this issue when your nearing the end of a thirty foot cut and the chain is starting to go away. A simple piece of tape or a small block of something attached the the top side of the bar right before the power head should divert the offending dust from re-entering the backside of your bar rail. This is the biggest problem I've had milling larger stuff over thirty inches wide. The problem is none existent in vertical cuts and only a problem with certain wood species causing it.

Hope that helps someone.

 

[TRTermite]

This relates directly to chip jamming up on the back side of the bar in tulip poplar. Never had this issue with other wood and I've never slabbed cottonwood. Likely it will do the same thing with it's fibrous nature.

Went out milling some poplar this past month and the bigger bars aka: 3002 ES41"wn compared to the smaller mount 3003 GB40" roller nose jammed the chip more on the back side. The wider bar even with a new loop of RS on it tends to jam more chip imho than a lesser bar. The only real difference between the two is about an inch in length plus the taller height in profile. They both run 404 chain. Now my 660 is ported and a still near stock 084 the power is near equal but the big saw pulls down to lower RPMs in the cut. The 084 needed an 8 pin to clear chip better so its telling me the slower chain speed is a direct correlation between chip jamming and chain speed. I found on most chip jams I'm the problem by causing the slow chain speeds during my cut with too much forward pressure. That said if your able to run higher rpms or a bigger rim most of the low rpm jams went away on the same chain in the same wood. It was pulling mostly chip not dust so it wasn't caused by a dull chain. The dull chains on shorter bars running 050 375 will walk right up out of the backside rail and lock right up if you bog it down at all. Making the chain more aggressive plus being razor sharp seems to cure all these issues buy pulling and clearing larger chips from the bar face area. I see dust feeding back from the exit area and running back into the feed side when my cutters start to dull.

Odd bit to note. The chain went dull when it caught something like dirty bark or whatever and the effect was instant. The saw slowed on it's forward progression and the dust started feeding right back into the chain feed side. Things started to heat up at that point as expected.
Also noticed the cutters didn't dull nearly as fast once the "clean" bark was stripped on the far side of my log. Guess these tulip poplar tend to hold sand and dust grown in the bark like black oak and others do. Having a deflector on top might cure this issue when your nearing the end of a thirty foot cut and the chain is starting to go away. A simple piece of tape or a small block of something attached the the top side of the bar right before the power head should divert the offending dust from re-entering the backside of your bar rail. This is the biggest problem I've had milling larger stuff over thirty inches wide. The problem is none existent in vertical cuts and only a problem with certain wood species causing it.

Hope that helps someone.

POSTS like this one has to make a BIG difference with how a reader ciphers what is happening as he is cutting .. if the reader is forewarned he/she may never know the problem could have existed. Thanks from ME