Green chain

cjmlarson

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Started the process of getting all the parts together for the building of a green chain. For those of you that are wondering what a green chain is, it is what brings the green logs or uncut logs up to the carriage. We are rolling them at this point and that can get to be tricky and dangerous when they are wet from rain and or when they are not nice and round. Especially when they are quite large.

A couple years ago I found some chain that came out of a wrecked live bottom semi trailer. This is where the work started.

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This is the belting after I removed the chain from it.

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This is the chain with all the ears that are welded to the chain that were bolted to the cross members on the belting. So I needed to remove all the welded on ears on both chains.:build:

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This was a very daunting task :help2:. There was 4 ears welded on every foot and each chain was 84 feet long which is 336 ears times two chains that = 672 ears that needed to be remove :eek:.

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All I can say is uffda. But this part is complete and yes I am sore:(.

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This shows one of the completed chains and rolled up and ready to be moved out side.
This chain will ride on top of the rail road rail that is already being used. I will drive this chain hydraulically .
 
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I needed to make sprockets for the chain in the above photos. I made a cardboard cut out that seemed to be what would work. Then I was trying to transpose it to a piece of oak for a pattern. Made one at home that turned out horrible, was using a saber saw (didn't work). Went to the work weekend and got some advise from Ray W. and then Jim B. got me the correct tools to get this drawn up correctly. Then I cut it out using Jim's band saw that worked much better. Next step was to locate four pieces of metal that could be used as the sprockets. Found them and then went home to start the next process.
Here I turned them down to 7 inches in diameter and 1 inch thick.
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This was the critical part. The chain has a three inch pitch to it, Meaning the holes I had to drill needed to be exactly 3 inches apart all the way around. This is the part that Jim told me had to be exact and everything else will fall into place.

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Just double checking the punch marks, all was lining up all the way around.

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Holes have been drilled and now I am drawing more marks to cut the ears off at each hole. You can see a line just under the square.
 
Hi Clayton,

Thanks for the update. I am betting the holes shown were 'drilled' using a milling machine. Other than getting the center in the correct location, that looks like the easy part. What is the plan for removing the rest of the material?

Later,
Jerry Christiansen
 
Yes I used a milling machine. I will show more of the progress later this week. Have to get a chance to put more pics on the computer. Jim B was correct, once the circle was correct with the three inch pitch was put on the metal with center punch marks , the rest came together nicely.
 
I didn't get pictures of using the portable band saw cutting the ears off next to the holes. Have a couple left to do so maybe doing those I will try to get some pictures of that.
The next pictures are milling the flats of the sprockets and cleaning them up nice and smooth.

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Next step was to spin them in the lathe again and taper the edges and bore the hole in the center where the shaft will go.

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Have two finished, I think these will work ok.
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Just need to build two more and then move on to making the mounting brackets that will attach to the rail.
 
Looks great Clayton! Pretty cool how working with Jim... if it's not in parts anywhere and it can be made, he will know how to get it done. Great opportunity to get to learn this stuff!
 
That is correct Mark, but I better give Ray W. some credit here for pushing me forward to do this myself and not hire them cut out. I would of not had any budget left if I would of done it that way.
There is a lot of satisfaction in doing some of these things yourself.
 
Finished the last two sprockets today. I should clarify what Jerry asked in reply #4. I used a compass, A set of dividers, Strait edge, center punch, Drill press for drilling holes and for machining, then a lathe for boring the holes and the taper. No special Cad drawings or plasma cutting or lazer, or vertical mill.
For as slow as this will turn I think all will work well.

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For some on this forum this may seem quite trivial............ but for a mechanic not a machinist I would do this again after being told how to do this. :not_worthy:
 
It was a large drill press, meaning it had a very solid bed and vise with enough power to turn a 1 1/8 milling bit.
Also I used a square to line up the flats square to the drill press base after using a portable band saw to cut the excess metal off after drilling the holes. Does that answer the question? You can see this in post 6.
 
I guess I am still curious if the bed on your drill press had some sort of cross travel in order to mill that flat.
 
Ok, Now I get your question, sorry I am a little slow. yes it does have a cross travel bed, but is not near anything like a good vertical mill. I had to travel really slow and the bit had to be very sharp.
 
Been working on making bearing holders for where the sprockets get put.20180211_172053.jpg

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Here I am making the plate that will have the drive motor mounted to it. I have no idea what this two speed trany is from, but I picked it up at a sale a couple years ago. Wimpy thinks it came off of a Wisconsin engine.

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I had trouble finding a hub to get coupled up to this, but did find a clutch that I was able to remove its hub and make a coupling to get it coupled together.

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Actually it turned out pretty good and when I was done it didn't bind and turned over real smoothly.

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Picture is poor but you will see this is going to be driven hydraulically.
 
I should get this thread more up to date. After getting the green chain installed there was a issue with not enough torque to turn it when the rails were full of big logs. I had to put a gear reduction in so that the drive had enough power to advance the logs forward. Once I did that it worked real good.20180608_181402_resized.jpg

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I can not find some of the photos that show the gear reduction, but it is all in this area of the transmission.

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Josh found this tree and thinks we should cut it down so we have a big log for when the Case 150 shows up at our mill next year during the show.
 
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