Realized I was running the cutter head at full throttle for 3 years before a foreman pulled me aside

I was on a job near Baton Rouge last month clearing a channel and the foreman on site asked why my suction was so low. I told him I was running at full throttle like always. He just looked at me and said have you ever tried backing it down to 70 percent. I did it right there and the vacuum pressure jumped from 8 inches to almost 14. I felt like an idiot because I had been burning extra fuel and wearing out teeth for no reason. Has anyone else had a similar wake up call with their setup?

2 comments

2 Comments

ben_shah939d ago

Swapped out a few cutter teeth after reading @robinmason's advice and it made a bigger difference than any throttle adjustment I tried. Just watched the gauges more carefully instead of guessing.

robinmason9d ago

Not to pile on but even the 70 percent thing isn't totally right for most cutterheads. The sweet spot on a standard 20 inch Lely is usually around 55 to 60 percent throttle depending on your material and pump speed. If you were getting 8 inches at full throttle and jumped to 14 at 70 percent, you might actually be overloading the pump or cavitating at that lower speed instead of finding the real balance. I've seen guys ruin seals running at 70 percent because they thought it was the magic number. The real trick is to watch your vacuum gauge and engine load together and find where they cross, not just drop to a fixed percentage. You want the highest vacuum without the engine bogging down, and that point moves with every different cut.