Have put a few armfuls of 2 - 3 mm diameter hard dry sticks through, great results - noisy but ! !
Look forward to delving into the blade section as I'm sure there's been serious neglect of maintenance. Doubt the air filter has ever been even looked at before, and the fuel tank and carb were a disgrace.
Have put a few armfuls of 2 - 3 mm diameter hard dry sticks through, great results - noisy but ! ! .
Err, meant to write 2 to 3 cm diameter sticks were put into the hopper, not 2 to 3 mm doh !
That was before I found out only up to 15 mm diameter sticks should be put into the shredder part.
Anyway it handled them OK but from now on I'll try to avoid anything bigger than 15mm into the hopper.
The chipper chute is 7 cm wide and takes sticks up to that size OK but they need to be fed in slowly however sticks of that size get used for firewood in our wood heater.
Thanks to having the manual I've now had a good look over this machine. Apart from being rusty in parts it is in quite good nick and I'm hoping to get a good amount of use from it. Next job will be removing and sharpening the chipper blades, they have obviously had a pounding.
15mm is a fairly conservative value - its mainly if you go thicker than that you risk bending the swinging hammer blades, or jam it and burn out the belt.
They are hardened steel but have seen a couple snapped
Only been feeding in hard dry sticks. The chips exit through a curved plate with small holes and it looked like it would be a real hassle if soft sappy stuff blocked up those holes.
Have put a couple of trailer loads of dry sticks through and it does make nice mulch. There's lots of stick strewn walking tracks on our property. Too many sticks at once and the belt does slip.
Up til now I have been using an Ozito Silent Shredder, the one with the slowly revolving cog which crushes things against a plate. The result is chunks from hard dry sticks (up to 35mm diameter) or softer stuff gets sort of "pleated" rather than shredded but if it's too soft material gets stuck between the cog teeth and then nothing can be pulled through.
Both of these machines have their uses. and we have need for lots of mulch.