After getting back from the Moultrie expo and seeing all the latest sawmills, and sawing systems, reality is slipping back to tell me that I am fresh out of $60,000 thousands. A new 65 HP Perkins diesel is the power pack of choice but I'm afraid it ain't gona' happen. With all the junk yards around and cheap power sources, what's wrong with being inovative enough to put a vehicle motor on a homemade bandmill or swingmill? It's been done many times, I've just haven't tracked any down yet. Please share what you know and think about, concerning retrofitting auto engines for sawmill design. Pics would be nice. ;D
I´ve seen some home made machines with engines from trucks and cars. There is a lot of fuel to save with a speed control and without it you need a much biger engine with more torqe.
Thats why I think a car engine isn´t what you need for an aircompressor, generator or sawmill.
Swede.
hi folks.. new here, lurking for a while... just read this post... i am curently building a bandmill and i beleive i have found the perfect engine for it .. an early vw diesel.. they produce about 60 hp,at 3500 rpm.. cheap on fuel. and u can buy a complete car for 500$ .... they are light, under 300 lbs, and are quite small in size . this is what i will use to power my mill.
thanks freddy
Well you know I think a motorcycle engine is just about perfectly suited for a sawmill, especially if it has a automatic transmission. They are very light weight.
If I was starting from scratch ( which I'm not ) I would consider multiple uses for the power plant. I'd be tempted to go with an electric mill and have a generator mounted in the truck to power it. The generator could also be used to power the house in power outages and maybe even some other stuff like general shop tools.... moulders,saws ect.
I'll be looking thru ebay for all the hardly used generators that should be hitting the market this winter. I'm not looking to power a mill, but I might like to power some of that other equipment with it.
I don't know how long an automotive engine would take the high rpm and heavy load in a mill application. They usually see short bursts of acceleration and a lot of loafing. Well at least for most of us I have been known to abuse one or two ;D What about using the engine out of a combine?
you fix the band speed by pulleys to get the rpms matched up. I'd think the weight would be a bigger concern.
I know of a few generators here that are using an early '80s volkswagon diesel turn power them. They seem to hold up well. They used pulleys and belts to change the ratio so they run at 1200 rpm instead of 3600. What I would be worried about is the weight also.
I sure would go along with the VW diesel for use with a narrow band sawmill, the main problem would be to find one that is not burned up. The cost to over-haul a diesel takes a big bunch of change. The VW engine has an aluminum head, that can be damaged if the engine has been run hot.
To use it for a power plant, requires a governor and a outboard bearing mounted by the flywheel to take the stress from belts. It would need a larger radiator than used in a VW car and would need a belt driven fan.
Actually Don, if'n yer talking about powering a mill all electric it would be a whole bunch cheaper and easier ta run a big'n.
You can git a military or industrial surplus genset for surprisingly little coin if it's setup ta give ya 600 volts on 3 phase.
Likewise, big electric motors are a lot easier ta come by in that voltage than 220 volt.
For everything else just run it to a step-down transformer ta give ya the 200 volt or 120 volt ya need.
Dang got me thing on this when he posted about an engine for his md
you could takke the whole sub frame out of a 4cly or v6 car and lock one side of the transaxle
with the brake on the other side you can put a pulley in the place of the wheel to run the mill
you could makeaframe to reduce the size and weight. ???
You would need a fully governed engine or when you took the load off of the engine it would over rev. I can't see how you could get a gas auto engine to work without a governor.
A diesel should work because they are governed.
I can't imagine how high a motorcycle engine would rev without a load. smiley_huh2
I suspect a car engine could be rpm governered electrically using the fuel infection computer, same as the electric governor on my power stroke diesel does it.
Ya'll are over thinking this governor thing, all ya need is an aftermarket cruise control for a car. there are many types, they work off the distributor, the computer, or a magnet attached to a rotating shaft.
When I was runnig a home built mill I was tempted to power it with a GEO metro 3 cyl. It would be real light and easy on gas.I owned two of them and drove both way over 100,000 mi. with no repairs.I just was't sure about all the computer junk you would have to keep intact for the fuel injection.
Woodbowl,
Considering the weight of the engines, have you considered either A) Keep the sawhead stationary as far as up and down is concerned. It would still slide back and forth. Make the bed raise and lower via hydraulics, or B) Turn the sawhead 90 degrees from normal (similar to a shop bandsaw), make the head slide back and forth or make the log bed slide like a circular sawmill.
Just a couple of ideas to get those cogs turning.
Stew
Been thinking mainly about the Brand X swinger configuration. You could put what ever motor you wanted to on that baby. ;)
Here's a nudder whacky idea .... ::)
Why couldn'cha take a regular small car engine, couple a big honkin' (surplus) hydraulic pump, or a coupla' smaller ones, to the back of it and power the mill with a hydraulic motor.
It would leave ya' enough spare hydraulic power an flow to make just about everything down to the operator's chair hydraulically powered or adjustable......... ::)
Udder dan da obvious losses of a hydrostatic system, seems ya could do it without too much sacrifice.
I like D&L's approach with the Doublecut mills. They use a small(6hp I think) engine to run the hydraulics. This way, they don't have hoses laying around everywhere, and have plenty of hydraulic power for whatever is needed. These little engines only cost a couple hundred bucks, so you could keep a spare, and you don't have to disassemble the whole mill to replace it.
Also, with their four-poster design, weight of the main engine isn't such a big issue.
Quote from: Murf on October 27, 2005, 09:49:06 AM
Why couldn'cha take a regular small car engine, couple a big honkin' (surplus) hydraulic pump, or a coupla' smaller ones, to the back of it and power the mill with a hydraulic motor.
That will work Murf! .............Seems I've heard somewhere that you take a big cut in effeciency in the power transfer, like 65%! That only leaves one third of the power you started off with. ...........Anybody know anything about this?
I don't know about the 65% bizness, but I know that anytime you change modes of power, you always have a transfer loss. The idea is intriguing, but not enough to make it worthwhile, given today's energy prices. That, of course, is just my humble opinion, and you all know that all of my opinions are humble. I think Logmaster powers some of their mills with hydraulic motors, but I don't see them putting Woodmizer or Baker out of business. ::)
Some of the early Peterson mills went with hydralic drive, so it definately works.
One option was to drive it from a tractors hydralic system, but if I remember right it had to be a big (80hp) tractor to have a hydralic system with enough flow to run the mill properly. It wouldn't have taken the whole 80hp, but a smaller tractor just wont pump enough oil to do the job.
The other setup I've seen was a diesel engine / pump mounted on a trailer. The mill rails / frame could then be loaded on top for transport so the whole mill was still pretty portable.
As Woodbowl pointed out it may be that the losses in the hydralic system / cost of the bigger motor outweigh any other advantages with the system, but if you already had a big diesel and some cheap hydralic components it can definately be made to work.
Cheers
Ian
re hydralauic loss-most hydrostatic drives are 95 98 efficent.. the rest5-2 percent are converted to heat. costly compared to belt/chain/gear drives but more vavable or when it is unecenomical (sp)to use due to distance/angles
freddy
This saw works good, cuts like a beast
http://www.scrubtec.co.uk/
cancel the pop up disply thiny and click on the trekka saw pic
or phone them they will talk to you for a goodly amount of time if your not a tyre kicker
iain
Quote from: freddycougar on October 28, 2005, 12:31:16 AM
re hydralauic loss-most hydrostatic drives are 95 98 efficent.. the rest5-2 percent are converted to heat. costly compared to belt/chain/gear drives but more vavable or when it is unecenomical (sp)to use due to distance/angles
freddy
Not understanding any of this. Can someone translate?
Olen, a hydrostatic drive system is not 100% efficient, just like a propeller there is power losses.
In the case of a hydrostatic system though, most of the loss is because there is heat generated by the pump and motor, some of the energy that should produce work, instead produces heat, between 2% & 5% generally.
There are however some big benefits sometimes. Like being able to have nothing more than a couple of hoses between the power source (pump) and the motor.
Another is, as I mentioned earlier, being able to have a single source (pump) making enough power (pressure & flow rate) to run several things simultaneously.
The other consideration is weight, or in this case, the lack of it. A relatively small, light hydraulic motor is capable of producing some pretty impressive horsepower.
If a substantial engine-driven pump and remote reservoir were used to power a small mill, the head would be very light and the construction would be greatly simplified.
As an example, you could generate 20-25hp using a hydraulic motor that weighed less than 30 pounds given an adequate supply of hydraulic power to that motor.
Then a few smaller (read cheaper) motors could give you a live log deck, a hyd. slab conveyor to the off-bearer, a hyd. de-barker, a hyd. log turner, a loader, maybe even a hyd. edger blade or two.
Hydraulics are also very easy to automate or set to do repetitive cycles, and are very weather (and sawdust) resistant.
who knows about or has seen hyd, drives for circle saws, 16 inch??
i am headed in that direction for the contraption sitting in my garage as i did not want go with pullys & belts and direct drive wont work out for my application. as it is mobile elect is not an option.
some thoughts on hyd.
weight of total oil volume vrs pullys belts bearings shafts ??
wear-tear / lifespan on hyd vrs mech / belts pullys bearings ??
fire hazard ??
water based hyd fluid ????
appears this is a newer water based hyd fluid replacement that works with additives for rust , ect. any one seen / hear any thing about this ???
with hyd, my concern was that the hyd pump will bog down during the cut & the log feed will continue to feed the log & break all kinds of stuff !!!
this probably could be solved but i have not got that problem worked out so far.
my powerplant has 136 h.p. & is governed/ controlled by the cruise control system that was in the vehicle as it is *matched* to it and i did not have to fab, make, invent, a governer system.
blade speed is constant with & without load on the blades
again thanks for all help & workd of wisdom on this
robotguy.
I have no experiance with circles, peter has a 52" circle with a pump sitting in the woods
for the life of me i cant remember if the drive is direct, through belts. or hydralic pump as all the afore mentioned gubbings are there
i know the pump is rated at about 78hp
if i can find my little dig ill go and take a pic or two ( i dont think Linda will let me have her big shinie new nikon )
iain
one thing to be aware of using automotive cruise controls, is the hysteresis of the controls is very large (hysteresis is the difference from turning off and on, or on and off, it's the term for your heating thermostats on/off difference)
case in point, jack your car up, put it in gear, and try to set the cruise control for whatever speed, the engine will surge and go crazy with no load against it. at least my Mustang does this, I tried it once!
It may work, but it may prove worthwhile to test it first, and then come up with plan B
why not look around for a bus air conditioning unit that has been removed to make way for a motorhome conversion.
I have just purchase and installed a toyota 2c diesel engine into my Mahoe sawmill the engine has the govenor of course and so far my only problem is the engine strains a bit and cutting is abit slow when cutting 12x6 cuts. Although in tinkering with the fuel flow settings I am getting more torque from the motor. I think the engine was "depowered" when it was put into the bus.
I have also just purchased a turbo which bolts stright on and soon I will be installing this.
I know here in New Zealand pop 4 million there are quite a few of these units floating around( different buses use different designs) So where you are there should be a few.
Worth looking at.