Bandit Rope Shear Device

Brush feeding into a chipper has the potential to snag either winch cables equipped with the chipper itself or, separately, climbers’ ropes found in the gear of tree care professionals and pull either of them into the rotating chipper knives. You must exercise extreme caution to prevent this because the knives can grab and pull in any type of line and anything attached to it at a high speed. Death or serious injury can result. Thus, never have any cable or rope near feeding brush or the feed system of the chipper. Also, metal can be ejected from the infeed chute at high speed which can cause death or serious injury to a person located within the path of the discharged material.

Bandit developed a patent-pending device that is designed to shear or deflect either winch cables or climbers’ ropes should either accidentally enter the chipper housing in order to prevent them from further wrapping around the disc or drum at a high rate of speed causing the end of the cable to viciously snag or strike anything in the work area and/or rapidly pull or drag anything attached to it toward the chipper. After extensive testing, it can be concluded that machines equipped with this device can potentially offer an improved chance that the cable can be severed, detached, or deflected from chipping system in an accident situation; which may prevent a serious injury, death, or at minimum reduce the extent of a serious injury. Here is how it works.

Protection is offered on both disc and drum style chippers. On drum style chippers, this device takes the form of a cross-member bar that contains a bolt-mounted counter-knife that spans the full width of the drum and is mounted in the upper portion of the drum housing. As the knife on the drum passes during its rotation, the special counter-knife cut-off — with its properly adjusted clearance– creates a slicing, deflective action that can either dislodge or shear foreign material such as cables or ropes that the knife on the drum may be carrying or dragging. This can prevent the cable or rope from further wrapping around the drum at a high rate of speed and being pulled entirely into the chamber through the space between the feed wheels. The same concept is used on disc chippers except the counter-knife cut-off actions are performed in the area of the shaft where wrapping is more likely to occur. Bandit Industries is currently implementing this device as a standard design on both its disc and drum style chippers with retro-fit kits available for older machines.

See how it works by clicking on the link below: