Altec chuck-n-duck chipper not feeding

T

tbroberg

Location
San Diego
I bought a 1996 Altec DC 12 with ~1200 hours on it dirt cheap on Craigslist.

It wasn't feeding well, and the cutter bar was cracked, so I replaced the cutter bar and sharpened the knives. (That was a lot more work than I expected!)

Now, it grabs the branches pulls them in sharply, cuts them to a point and then stops. The remaining sticks are nicely curved on the top coming to a point about 1/8" tall. The chips are nicely curved on the concave side and lumpy on the convex side.

It looks like the plate below the cutter bar is below the cutter bar about 1/8" on the edges but 1/4" in the middle, causing the branches not to feed. (photo below)

(I'm not crazy about what's going on on the top of the picture either, but I don't see how it's hurting anything, and don't have any great ideas how to bend such heavy steel back into shape.)

I can find the part in the manual, but it sure looks like I would need to remove the drum to replace it.

I'm thinking my options are:
  1. Remove the drum, replace the part. Huge job. Expensive part.
  2. Get a big punch and a big hammer on the thing from below. Cheap. Easy. Might not work. Some concerns about damaging the steel.
  3. Lay some material along that edge as a spacer. Maybe a thin band of wood or some heavy tape that won't damage the blades when it inevitably gets sucked in. Masking tape?
Questions:
  1. Is there a way to replace that part without removing the drum?
  2. Any advice on which of the three options above to pursue (or a 4th and better option)?
  3. Am I wrong not to worry about the bend on the top?
  4. If I decided I needed professional help in the San Diego area, any suggestions? (For the chipper, not for me!)
Thanks for reading this far and thinking about it,
- Tim.

20181014_130845.webp
 
What is the shiny strip at the bottom? Back of the anvil or back of a blade?

Looks like the floor plate of the chipper is dished. Hammering seems futile. Heat and heavy jack might bend it up.

You might add in a piece of plate with shins underneath to raise the floor.

What’s the round face in the upper right?
 
I believe that's the brand new cutter bar, but it's possible it's the back of the newly sharpened blade.

The round face is the top of the enclosure that feeds into the drum.
 
by newly sharpened, do you mean they were sharpened on a purpose-built grinding machine by a sharpening service, or you with the angle grinder? How can it wave so much?
 
Looks like the cutter bar is set too high. Drop it down to no more than a 1/4 inch and bring the knives down to it about the thickness of a matchbook flap
 
tbroberg said:
Good thought, however painful it may be to re-gap 4 knives.

Thanks.
Click to expand...
I bought a 16 inch wood chuck drum chipper that someone had moved the anvil/cutter bar up like a 1/2 inch and put the knives in upside down. They didn't resurface or flip the anvil either. So I went to work and looked at the distance the anvil was up from the bottom of the scute at the same chipper at work and put mine at home to all the same tolerance s and it chips great. I hope this help let us all know if I does.
 
I finally got that floor plate out, which was a nasty job. Stuck screws, screws that just spun and then rounded the allen heads.

Once I finally drilled the last of them out, the thing was about 1/4" too wide to come out the back. I had to slant it up and push it forward under the drum and then fish it out the other side.

It was grooved by 1/16", bent from side to side by 1/8", slanted by 1/16", and then bent fore and aft by another 1/16" or so.

It seems this machine has seen hard times.

Altec took over a week to even give me an estimate on the thing, and then needed a month to deliver, so I went to a local fabricator this morning.

We'll see whether this brings the floor up in range of the cutter bar, but it should at least be level now so that it's possible to adjust the cutter bar parallel to the floor.

<fingers crossed>
 
Sounds like you are on the right path. Someone put that thing threw the ringer. Baileys online has parts for that thing also if you need them. You will get it figured out. Good luck ,let us know.
 
Got the replacement part back from the local fabricator. Cost $150 instead of $230, came back in a few days instead of a month.

Barely managed to wiggle it in and get a wrench on the screw heads under the blades. I expect I would have had to pull one if they were much farther out.

Then it mostly worked, but still gave me sharpened sticks rather than chips on the skinny straight ones, so I brought the cutter bar down 1/8" more and regapped all the knives again.

Working well now. Thanks for the support.
- Tim.
 
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