[Gasification] Chip Guillotine

Doug Doug.Williams at orcon.net.nz
Fri Jan 17 01:34:03 CST 2014


Hi Jeff, Paul, and Colleagues,

Since I posted the first stage of making and testing this innovative little concept of making cooking stove fuel and even gasifier fuel, I have found it necessary to add another little moving part to keep blade slot clear of chips. After a cutting a few full lengths, the slot packed very tightly, so a simple lever just pulls a pivoting flat bar upwards and ejects the plug.

I found that it cuts our native hardwood’s easily, and also bamboo which shatters into separate bits as the hollow centre allows the tube to crush, then cut cleanly. Compared to using a machete or hatchet to cut these smaller branches/cane stems/reeds/shrubs etc., all the bits drop out without flying all over the place needing to be picked up. I will probably be making a few angle brackets from the base angle mounts to mount a sheet metal trough on each side of the blade.

In regards to the force required to make a cut, it is similar to cutting say 3mm steel in a hand guillotine. Surprisingly, I found some woods cut better at right angles with less force, so have a few new things to learn about how wood chip cuts in ways that we like. The nice chunky round chips also displayed very little laminar displacement of the grain, which results in lots of chip just falling apart. This might be OK for stoves, but not gasifiers.

Another interesting factor that resulted by hand grinding the cutting disc, is the the grinding disc left a fine serration to the blade edge, making it look like a micro tooth saw, rather than a knife edge. It works rather well, so easy to resharpen in most rural workshops. The thought of a ground blade isn't a low tech solution!  Also added was a blade stop, bolted to one of the blade holes to stop the blade crunching down onto the chip clearing blade.

Finally, a coat of paint in "Fluidyne Red and Black", should inspire any DIY who needs one. I will show the whole project on the Fluidyne Archive once I assemble a few more photos of the fuel cutting detail.

Doug Williams,
Fluidyne.
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