Morbark Inc., Winn, Mich., will soon offer a quick conversion kit designed to enable its horizontal grinders to produce wood chips in addition to mulch.
The company demonstrated the kit at its Demo Days event, held in early May at its company proving grounds. At the event, a Morbark 4600XL Wood Hog Horizontal Grinder outfitted with the kit first produced chips and then, less than three hours later, used its usual hammermill configuration to produce mulch. “This is a tremendous innovation for our customers,” says John Foote, Morbark’s vice president of sales and marketing. “The ability to switch from grinding to chipping and back creates opportunities for horizontal grinder owners by giving them a new product line to supplement their grinding operations.” Morbark says its kit does not require the removal of the entire hammermill, which saves time and also eliminates the need to have a crane involved in the conversion. “We can expect the average conversion to be under four hours, depending on the overall maintenance and condition of the mill,” says Gary Bardos, Morbark vice president of manufacturing. He continues, “We have been able to produce very high quality fuel and pellet chips during beta testing in the field. These mills will produce a chip between 5/8ths of an inch to 3/4ths of an inch in size with some level of control toward reducing the size through managing the feed rates.” Adds Foote, “Expectations for the kit are high because it allows grinder owners to enter the market for biomass energy chips without purchasing a chipper, but [instead] by better utilizing the equipment they already own.” A Morbark news release states it expects the kit to be available to the market this summer for the Morbark 3800 and 4600XL Wood Hog horizontal grinder models. Kits for other models will be available later. More information on Morbark and its products can be found at www.morbark.com.