I know you are talking about a power feed disc . In the "old days" no such thing as a 'kill switch" on a chuck and duck. I have owned many. Yes a 'chuck and duck is rarely if ever used by a commercial tree service today, thankfully so. I will tell you it does not matter what motor is on it at all but when you get a 16" drum rolling powered by a 330 Ford there is little short of the lord himself going to stop it. Those folks that have run them daily will tell you how long they run AFTER the clutch is disengaged
I'm talking about the feed roller, not the flywheel. The kill switch stops the feed roller and opens the feed roller. They were all Vermeer chippers. I don't remember the model number.
I understand you are referencing the hydraulic feed/feed rollers. They are much safer. The old chuck and ducks had no such thing. Once it is in.... it is in...and out.
I had a Asplundh 12" with a 300 Ford inline six. I had Asplundh 16" with the 330 Ford V-8. I had another 16" with a Ford 330 V-8 . It was supposed to be a Fitchburg but it was not. I had a old Asplundh cable lift bucket/ship truck. Yes I had a trifecta plus one in dangerous tools. I want to be crystal clear I am not a "tree guy" never have and never will claim to be. I simply like tools to take care of business.
That is a very well put statement.
Often what a normal day to day person thinks is a safety mechanism, really isn't. Our first chipper was a 16" Asplundh drum chipper, no fold up chute. The next one was same size and brand with a fold up chute. That is the only really safety thing I've seen put on chippers in the last 50 years. Controlled feed on chippers is a definite safety feature. The reverse bar, sort of. But, if you are that special kind of stupid person that reaches past it, you can't reach back and outside the chute, you are already gone. The two cables that hang down through the top middle of my chute look like a safety mechanism, and I'm sure that is what they are there for. Just think how you would reach back and find one, tangled in brush, with your other hand being crushed by a feed roller with knives all the way across it. The reverse bar, no matter how it's labeled, is used to reverse the feed to spit stuff back out, or just stop the feed, to let the engine build back up RPM's. It's used multiple times a day. If you ever get a chance to check out a non running/stopped chipper, reach in till you can touch the feed roller with one hand, and see if you can reach back with the other and grab the bar? I've heard of quite a few workers going through chippers. I've NEVER heard of one being saved by the pull cables or reverse bar. I'm sure it's happened, I've just never heard of it. Another thing to think about, and thinking is what safety is all about. Say you get your hand in a feed roller? Are you going to go through your decision tree to decide what to do? Lets put it into perspective. Lets just say the decision tree says, "PULL THE STOP CABLE". Your hand gets crushed, you think, "PULL", and it's up to your elbow, you think, "THE", and it's up to your shoulder, The cable is out of reach, so are you.
As I mentioned in another post on this thread. A lot of what people think is safety equipment, really isn't. I said I would measure how far my safety cable that hangs through the chute is from the feed wheel. It's only about 10"s. So, if you were feeding the feed rollers at a diagonal and got your left hand caught, by the time you could reach and pull the cable with your right hand, your left arm and head would probably be gone. Same with the reverse bar. if your left hand got caught, your right hand and arm would have to be made out of rubber to grab the bar. That's not taking into account the shock of having bones crushed and being dragged into the machine.
