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Homemade wood splitter with an electric motor from the washing machine

homemade splitterAnd in the XXI century, the complete gasification of Russia remains the destiny of the distant future. Not only remote villages, but many small towns are forced to rely on wood-burning stoves, which require a lot of fuel to be harvested every year, because winter is long and cold.

If you have the strength and health, then you can wave the ax, and if you don’t have the strength or don’t want to spend them on a dull, monotonous job of splitting the dull chocks? You can turn on your head, watch a video or read our article and make a splitter with an engine from the washing machine.

Design selection

Compared to hand chopping wood, working on a wood splitter is a pleasure. There is no need to waste energy splitting chocks, raising a heavy cleaver, sweating and cursing the stove heating. When working with a wood splitter, you only give him chocks, and the whole burden of labor to split them is transferred to the mechanism. Before assembling a makeshift wood splitter with your own hands, you need to decide which design you will implement. There are at least three designs of splitter, fundamentally different from each other:

  • wood splitter with hydraulic mechanism;
  • rack and pinion splitter;
  • step-screw splitter.

Having considered all the options, our experts came to the conclusion that it is better to start making a drawing of a screw splitter. Its design, simpler, more compact, has fewer elements, and therefore cheaper. Thanks to the screw splitter, the process of chopping wood is significantly accelerated. What is a screw splitter?

splitter schemeThis unit consists of several main elements:

  1. frames;
  2. engine from the washing machine;
  3. drive mechanism;
  4. special cone.

The essence of his work is as follows. The motor from the washing machine rotates a small pulley. By means of a belt drive, work is transferred to a large pulley that is worn on a shaft. On the other end of the shaft is a special sharp cone with a thread. The shaft with the cone are parallel to the ground and rotate. The chock is pushed onto the rotating cone sideways, the cone is screwed into the chock sideways, quickly breaking it in half. Here we have to implement such a design with our own hands, but first, let's pick up the necessary tools and materials.

Important! If you put the chock on the cone end, the tree will fall between the frame and the cone, jam and break it, rendering the wood splitter unusable.

We select everything you need

To assemble a home-made screw splitter you will need a relatively small set of tools, minimal skills for working with electric welding and a multimeter, as well as materials. What do you need from the tools?

  • Electric welding with a set of electrodes 3 mm.cone for wood splitter
  • Drill.
  • Bulgarian.
  • Pliers.
  • Grinding wheel.
  • Vise, anvil.
  • Different screwdrivers, files.
  • Ruler, pencil.

With materials, everything is more complicated. Currently, there are a lot of videos on the network that demonstrate the operation of a screw splitter. These videos demonstrate at least several assembly options for the unit, but the essence of all the options is the same. First you need to find the main part - the cone. You can’t buy such a thing in the store, and it’s very difficult to make it yourself, because the cone is first turned, a thread with a short pitch is cut into it. Next, the cone is red-hot and maintained in this state in the oven for half an hour, then it is rapidly cooled in warm salted water.

There may be problems with the manufacture of the cone, but do not despair, there are online stores in which you can relatively cheaply purchase ready-made hardened cones, specially designed for makeshift wood splitters. There you can buy all the necessary parts for the gearbox, such as a shaft, a small and a large pulley, a belt and bearings.If you yourself have experience in manufacturing gearboxes and you have spare parts for them, then you can limit yourself to buying a cone; in all other cases, our experts recommend buying a “kit for a homemade screw splitter”.

In addition to the gearbox and cone, we will need a strong and reliable bed, we will weld it from steel corners, a sheet, as well as some parts of an old Soviet car. Prepare in advance approximately 4.5 m of a steel corner 40 mm, a rectangular sheet of metal 900x450 mm and a suspension of the VAZ 2101,02,03,04,05,06 or 07 cardan. If there are no parts from such machines in the garage, then all that is needed take on the analysis for a penny. Also, for the convenience of moving the wood splitter, two wheels can be welded to the bed from a medical gurney, a children's bicycle, etc., they also need to be prepared.

Note! For our purposes, you can take part of the universal joint from any rear-wheel drive Soviet or Russian car.

There remains one more detail, without which our screw splitter will not work - the engine. We make a wood splitter with the engine from the washing machine, so we need to disassemble any old washing machine with a collector motor, remove the latter, using a multimeter make sure that it works and prepare it. Well, that’s it in general terms. In addition to all of the above, we need various fasteners, but we can not talk about it separately, and so it’s understandable, we turn to the most interesting thing - the manufacture of a conical splitter.

We assemble the product

We will assemble a cone splitter with our own hands, which will turn the procurement of firewood from torture into pleasure. And we will start with the manufacture of the bed. We cut a corner with a grinder, 2 pieces of 1400 mm, 4 pieces of 200 mm and one piece of 450 mm. We lay two corners of 1400 mm in parallel at a distance of 450 mm each, connect the ends of the long corners with the letter “P” with a short corner of 450 mm and weld the connection. Then we step back from the welded joint 900 mm and weld between the corners the gimbal suspension element. Between the suspension and the first welded joint, we put our rectangular steel sheet (it will fit exactly in size), and weld it.wood splitter

Now we just have to weld 4 legs (4 pieces of 200 mm) at the edges of the structure, attach wheels to the two legs and the frame is ready. Next, we will deal with the gearbox. We insert a shaft into the suspension element, on one side we put a large pulley on it.

Important! In order to press the cone and pulley onto the shaft, the latter will have to be heated very strongly with a blowtorch.

The next stage is very responsible. It is necessary to put a small pulley on the motor shaft, and fix the engine under the welded suspension so that the small pulley is exactly under the big one. Mount the engine as securely as possible, as the structure will vibrate violently during operation. We connect pulleys with a belt. We supply the free end of the shaft (intended for the cone) with “eared” bearings, the latter need to be bolted securely to the metal sheet.wood splitter

Next, with our own hands we connect two wires of the engine to the machine, and we already connect the mains cable to it and check how the engine will work in conjunction with the gearbox, whether there will be slippage, jamming. If everything is in order, install the cone and check how our new splitter will work. The work is over. If the engine for some reason does not work or there are problems with its connection, read the article How to connect the engine from the washing machine. Everything is painted there, and if it is still not clear, see the explanatory video.

Note! Before you start using a new screw splitter, look at the video on how to do it right, I would not want you to ruin a thing that you hardly made with your own hands.

In conclusion, we note that we just brought you another option for excellent economic use of the engine from the washing machine. We hope you will be able to bring this idea to life and assemble a beautiful screw splitter.After reading the text of this publication, be sure to watch the video below. Good luck

   

2 reader comments

  1. Gravatar Michael Michael:

    The video engine is 4 Kva, but will it pull 180 W with a washer?

  2. Gravatar Alex Alexey:

    A washer with a collector motor has a speed of 15000 on the shaft. Here the gear ratio is incorrect, if only to write an article. Illiterate schoolchildren, who do not understand what they are writing, are fed up with.

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