I used to think you had to run the cutter head at full tilt all the time, but a job on the Ohio River last spring made me rethink that.

We were working a stretch with a lot of old timber and debris. Running the head at max RPM just kept jamming everything up and shaking the whole rig. My lead told me to dial it back to about 60% and let the ladder angle do more of the work. It felt wrong at first, like we were wasting time. But we cleared more yardage that day with way less wear on the drive system. Now I'm way more careful about matching the head speed to what's on the bottom. Anyone else adjust their approach based on bottom conditions like that?

2 comments

2 Comments

finley_wells6620d ago

What kind of bottom conditions make you drop the RPMs even lower than that? We hit a patch of pure clay last month that needed a real slow grind.

david_hayes20d ago

Pure clay's sticky but was it really that bad? Sometimes you just gotta push through it.