second handfeed back on the machine your talking about has not been great, I personally think bandit should completely scrap their loader design and start fresh. We have 4 woodsmen’s now and to be honest they all come from the factory with some issues, but after you work thru them they are amazing machines. we are thinking about ordering a 12" woodsmen for one of our line clearance crews. I have never liked morbark, I worked for a company who had a 2400xl with a loader on it, it was a very poorly designed and built machine (IMO), 4 years old and the entire frame needed to be rebuilt from scratch because it tore itself apart. It was down more than one of woodsmens early attempts at a grapple machine. I don’t like the way the chip, feed or anything about them. I have heard from people in the industry that morbark doesn’t really care that much about their smaller machines (as far as investing in design improvements) they spend more time on their grinders and larger machines. Not sure how accurate that is but looking at how little has changed in their machines over the years it could be true. The source of this info was a former Morbark employee who now works for a competitor so he is not an unbiased source. I haven’t worked with a 20r yet but after spending 30mins walking around a year old grapple 20r i was not impressed with its durability. We bought a 1890 Brute a few months back as a smaller handfed chipper for a bucket crew, I have to say it has had no issues and works well, its not as aggressive as a woodsmen 18x but is certainly a nice chipper.
