Can a hydraulic splitter be to fast

[muddstopper]

You have to take my advice with a grain of salt. I always try to make chicken salad out of chicken poop. You already have a good cyl and splitting beam and you want to add a lift table. What you lack is hp and oil flow. To add a lift table you are going to have to also add a control valve and you say you can weld. Since you will need to add a control valve, buy one with two spools and bigger ports. Cut the ports off the cyl, drill out the barrel and weld on bigger ones. Now find a old riding mower and buy a larger hp engine with electric start. Make your pump mounts and buy a larger pump. Make a bigger oil tank or repurpose a 30lb propane tank. You can find the 30lb propane tanks off a old camper out of date and usually for nothing or very cheap. $2-$300 and you will have a very capable and fast splitter. If you dont want the work, you can always sell what you have and buy something newer, faster, stronger, but you will probably have more in it than what you can fix yours for. Do the work right and match the parts and you can get your splitter down to a 6sec or less cycle time.

 

[kevin j]

If you upsize pump, then suction and pressure hoses, valve, and cylinder ports may not be appropriate.

Buy a 3 inch bore cylinder for $150 and try it. You will need to juggle stroke numbers and get a pin to pin dimensions the same for a bolt in. If you don’t like it, switch back.

I have a portable splitter with Honda 160 engine, Barnes 13 gpm pump, 3 inch bore cylinder, 20 inch stroke, maxing 2500 psi for the engine torque and the cylinder pressure rating, which is about 8 tons.. 3-3.5 seconds out, under 3 seconds back.

Not made as a wood lot machine,since I can’t lift the big stuff anyway. I have a 4 inch with log lift that I could use for big stuff, but it is stored off site and the fast 3 inch does everything I need or can physically handle.

I am putting together a post for the fast log splitters thread, just don’thave the pics together yet.

 

[cantoo]

My splitter is molasses slow in this cold weather. It takes 1/2 hour before it moves very fast. I just installed the auto cycle and don't want to play with settings in the cold weather as it makes it unpredictable. Even after 1 1/2 hrs of splitting the tanks is still cold to the touch and the cylinder is barely warm. In the summer you can't hold your hand on the cylinder. I also installed a pressure gauge on it and the needle hardly moves so not sure that I'm getting the flow I should be getting. I changed too many things at one time so difficult to see if everything is working correctly. It still splits a lot of wood so I'm just going to keep using it as is until spring. I might drill out the cylinder next summer too. I know the holes are small.