Tub grinders

[sotc]

Have any of you owned or run tub grinders? Theres a little duratech HD-8 for sale locally. Small machine but I don't know much about them. What is your opinion of small grinders. This unit has near 2000 hours on it but looks to be in decent shape.

 

[MasterBlaster]

Cool.

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[Reddog]

Wear a hard hat and face shield, they spit stuff every where out of the tub/hammers. I have seen them spit out a 1/3 of a railroad tie, that lands with a good thud.
What do you plan to use to load it? The top of those tubs are pretty high for a mini.
Not sure what your plans are but they seem much slower than a chipper when in clean wood.

As far as operational costs the hammers last a long time in cleaner wood. Add rocks and metal the life is greatly shortened.

 

[CurSedVoyce]

Cool indeed.
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[flushcut]

I really have no clue with this machine. I am guessing you are looking to get rid of the slash and whatnot you are hauling with your Kboom. IMO it will work for you until you can upgrade and hopefully parts are plentiful and cheap.

 

[arborworks1]

Those machines look like they would be perfect for a tree service.

Well if you have room to pile wood for a while. Grind on days when the weather won't allow aerial work.
What is the thought on the mulch? End market

 

[sotc]

Not really concerned with loading it. If I got a machine like this a loader would be easy enough to come by.

Wally, that looked pretty efficient at grinding wood, why do you say slower than a conventional chipper? I really have no experience so just asking.

Upgrade? I doubt I would need to upgrade for a long time, to step larger is a huge investment.

Thoughts are to develop a mulch market. Grass and leaves would be acceptable where bio mass facilities won't accept those materials. Possibly a twice ground, dyed product. Really just exploring ideas at the moment

 

[treesandsurf]

Willy I've thought about the same thing. I've been spending an enormous amount of money on dumping both chips and logs at our local earth products place that uses grinders and processors to turn the material into a saleable product, so the result is they get paid twice coming in and out. They aren't cheap but pretty much one of the only places you can dump on the island, especially large pieces of wood. I've recently been allowed to dump on a large farm that has plenty of wood, have thought about trying to find a grinder and processing the quantities of material we get and make it a useable product. A lot of variables and uncertainties have stopped me and the cash flow of course. I would want to make sure you could sell the end product for sure, guess that's an obvious!

jp

 

[bonner1040]

The guys around here make mulch like gangbusters! There are 4 places within 10 miles of my shop where you can dump logs, brush and chips for free....

We must be the Mulch capital of the US!

 

[bonner1040]

It seems like once you go down that route though you never look back. All the mulch outfits here are businesses that have liquidated their once had tree service divisions. Apparently making mulch is much more lucrative. They all started buying machines to process their own material but then started accepting others material for free and stopped doing tree work.

The one place will send a grapple truck out to pick up any type of logs for absolutely free!!! Residential people, tree services whatever. They want that wood bad!

 

[flushcut]

Upgrade? I doubt I would need to upgrade for a long time, to step larger is a huge investment.

Yep upgrade. At some point you are going to out grow that machine.
There is a large tree Co. that I sub for and they have a large Vermeer horizontal grinder and that thing make massive amounts of $$$$$$$$$$$$. For example he has taken over the green waste disposal for five smallish cities and not to mention other tree services he has landed mulch contracts for large resorts and country clubs at $35k a pop.

 

[Reddog]

Wally, that looked pretty efficient at grinding wood, why do you say slower than a conventional chipper? I really have no experience so just asking.

Ask away.

Pallet, dimensional lumber or mill slabs, tubs go through quick. Logs tend to roll around on the hammers some. As the hammers round over they are just beating the wood fiber apart.
A couple logging operations here run Tubs for the mulch market and chippers for the chip market. All things equal Hp wise and the chipper will out produce all day in clean pulp logs.
Also for a tub to work best the raw material needs to fit in the tub. So a lot places using log length here have went to belt fed grinders to save on cutting.

All that said for the mulch market a grinder is about the only way to make product that meets what folks want. Dyed chips don't sell to well.

 

[sotc]

Interesting. I suppose one the doors open the opportunities arise. Problem being this machine is $35k, any larger is well over $100k

 

[Reddog]

Can you take some logs over and try it out? May give you a better understanding of speed with your raw material.

 

[sotc]

A lot of what I would want to throw into the machine would be beyond the capacity of my model 13. If dye doesn't sell then that's a no brainer

 

[sotc]

Thats a good idea. The machine is an hour away, if he had a loader that would be ideal

 

[Reddog]

Tye a slip hitch and drop them in with the knuckle boom?

 

[lumberjack]

How much horse power does it have? I agree, production by volume will be considerably less than an equal hp chipper.

 

[Reddog]

Must be right around a 100hp. The motors listed are 4BT Cummins and 4039T JD.

http://www.east-can.com/duratechmanuals/HD-8_Combined_up to 0358.pdf

 

[lumberjack]

A 100hp tub grinder is a hay buster. You could build a ramp and keep it stuffed with logs using a mini... Probably have time to load the mulch too.

 

[flushcut]

Interesting. I suppose one the doors open the opportunities arise. Problem being this machine is $35k, any larger is well over $100k

If you have it you will find uses for it and it is one of those things that not many people have. From the sound of it, it sounds like a smallish machine and I would think you are going to out grow it pretty quickly depending on how aggressively you plan on marketing that service. But, if you are just grinding you own waste it should serve you well.

 

[woodworkingboy]

In the thinning operations around here, they now have incorporated some new device that compacts the chips into large blocks, very neat tightly pressed together, approximately 5'x5'x5' blocks, or larger. They look odd sitting in the woods, like little elf houses or something. I'm thinking that if animals could burrow in, they would be most comfy habitats. The intention is just to leave them there, I believe, but it occurs that somehow they might be transportable. Have you guys ever seen that? I'll have to get a pic, it looks cool.

 

[MasterBlaster]

How very odd. A pic would be cool!

 

[sotc]

Yep, it has the 4 cyl cummins in it.

I could park it near my chip pile and drop stuff in with the mini, slap a set of grapples on the k boom, buy a skid steer or other front end loader etc.

 

[Al Smith]

There is a local gent I have mentioned who grinds brush , chipper tailings with a big tub grinder .I think it's around 600 HP .

After the ice storm a few years ago they brought in some monster grinders but they fed one a cast iron man hole cover which gave it a belly ache to the tune of around 100 grand to fix .oops .