Hi,
I'm in the middle of building an electrical chainsaw mill. Since I have a background in industrial automation, electronics development and embedded programming I decided to automate things quite a bit.
I'm going to use a 5.5kW three-phase motor to power the saw, a smaller motor for feeding and and a 24V geared DC-motor with wires and pulleys to lift the saw head. An optical rotary encoder will help keep track of the height.
The bigger motors will be controlled by two frequency drives I had laying around. I'll put some inductive sensors to act as limit switches to automatically turn of the saw and feeding when reaching the end of the log.
The rails and log bed will somewhat resemble a Norwood PM14, but the saw carriage will be different as I'll be using parts of a pallet wrapping machine.
Most of the electronics has been completed while waiting for other parts to arrive and I have welded most of the motor mount.
Instead of a very expensive 6m drag chain I'm thinking to tie several cables together to form a stable flat cable.
Now to my question/thought: Would it make sense to adjust the feed rate based on the main saw motor load? Since I use VFDs and modbus communication I can easily monitor current, power draw or rpm and should be able to continuously adjust the feed rate to accommodate for varying log thickness, dryness, density, knots etc. If the saw starts to bog down, the system will slow down the feed a bit. Likewise, if it cuts like through butter it can move faster.
From my experience in using an alaskan mill this sounds like a good idea, but I might be overthinking it.
Best regards,
Wileur
I'm in the middle of building an electrical chainsaw mill. Since I have a background in industrial automation, electronics development and embedded programming I decided to automate things quite a bit.
I'm going to use a 5.5kW three-phase motor to power the saw, a smaller motor for feeding and and a 24V geared DC-motor with wires and pulleys to lift the saw head. An optical rotary encoder will help keep track of the height.
The bigger motors will be controlled by two frequency drives I had laying around. I'll put some inductive sensors to act as limit switches to automatically turn of the saw and feeding when reaching the end of the log.
The rails and log bed will somewhat resemble a Norwood PM14, but the saw carriage will be different as I'll be using parts of a pallet wrapping machine.
Most of the electronics has been completed while waiting for other parts to arrive and I have welded most of the motor mount.
Instead of a very expensive 6m drag chain I'm thinking to tie several cables together to form a stable flat cable.
Now to my question/thought: Would it make sense to adjust the feed rate based on the main saw motor load? Since I use VFDs and modbus communication I can easily monitor current, power draw or rpm and should be able to continuously adjust the feed rate to accommodate for varying log thickness, dryness, density, knots etc. If the saw starts to bog down, the system will slow down the feed a bit. Likewise, if it cuts like through butter it can move faster.
From my experience in using an alaskan mill this sounds like a good idea, but I might be overthinking it.
Best regards,
Wileur