Electric chainsaw duty cycle?

Similar to auto starter motors, probably around 30s on to 5 min off.

A look at the Poulan site didn't give any indication they had any restriction on the larger one (3.5 hp), anyway.

I'd be surprised anything other than an obviously light, trimmer-type would be very limiting; be pretty useless if so.

Well the electric chainsaw I have is about 2100W and I live in the UK so

240V and 13A standard socket, no mention was given of what voltage or supply current the Poulan required so I would take the figure given unless you know otherwise.

Hmmm? 3.5 Hp out of a standard 120 V wall plug? That would be 21.7 A assuming 100% power factor and efficiency.

Ah, well, must be the same HP as air compressors and vacuums.

Jon

I have a Remington MOD300 for yard work. (Rated 120V, 11A, "3.0 peak HP") I occasionally cut up a lot of 3"-6" maple or birch limbs at once and have not run into any duty cycle constraints except for how long I take to set up the next cut. I expect the duty cycle might have to drop if you start and stop more than a couple hundred times per hour.

On 2/24/2012 5:39 PM, David Billington wrote: ...

...

Indeed...didn't notice, just copied the number in the heading. It's "peak" hp as you inferred.

Still, no indication of a duty factor in the owners manual operation or caution or specification sections.

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it really depends on the brand of saw. A big box store special will have a low duty cycle, per above. The Poulan and Craftsman 14 inch ones seem to do ok until stress heats up a nylon gear and then they die mechanically. I have run my Sthil electric nearly continuously for about 4 hours with no problem. But if you want a power source, it is probably a lot cheaper to buy a gear motor than a $650 chain saw.

that is the exact Poulan that I mentioned in an earlier reply - I went through 6 of them and 6 of their craftsman equivalents before I gave up

- the best lasted about 45 minutes, the worst one was dead out of the box, the next worse one lasted about 15 seconds. Except for the dead out of the box one, every one of them failed exactly the same way, a nylon drive gear pressed onto a hex shaft would soften up and the shaft would spin inside the gear. I returned every one under warranty, but that doesn't help if you are trying to cut some wood. In fairness, I was cutting full bar length (14"?? 16"??) making bowl blanks. I bought a Sthil for 10X the price and it has never failed even though I have cut full 20 inch bar length for a couple of hours (with only a few minutes of break to roll a new piece of wood into place). I guess quality does matter

If you want to buy a onsie electric power source, look at surplus places. The only one I know the name of is Herbach & Rademan, but there's others out there.

If you want to buy a onsie electric power source, look at surplus places. The only one I know the name of is Herbach & Rademan, but there's others out there.

that is the exact Poulan that I mentioned in an earlier reply - I went through 6 of them and 6 of their craftsman equivalents before I gave up

- the best lasted about 45 minutes, the worst one was dead out of the box, the next worse one lasted about 15 seconds. Except for the dead out of the box one, every one of them failed exactly the same way, a nylon drive gear pressed onto a hex shaft would soften up and the shaft would spin inside the gear. I returned every one under warranty, but that doesn't help if you are trying to cut some wood. In fairness, I was cutting full bar length (14"?? 16"??) making bowl blanks. I bought a Sthil for 10X the price and it has never failed even though I have cut full 20 inch bar length for a couple of hours (with only a few minutes of break to roll a new piece of wood into place). I guess quality does matter _____________________________________

I always respected Sthil, I think their products are a starting place for me.

The bar stud on my new Stihl MS211 unscrewed from the plastic saw body the first time I tried to adjust the chain.

jsw

The duty cycle depends a lot on the load.

At full load you may have a 20% duty cycle - one minute on, four minutes off, while at half load it may be 50% and at quarter load it might be 80% - and that 80% may allow 20 minutes on and 4 off.

I've seen nothing about duty cycle in the Remington manual for the one I have, probably wouldn't mean a lot to the majority of owners, even if they read the manual. Most aren't meant for full-on tree chopping duty, dicing up downed limbs and occasional brush clearing is what they're intended to do.

If you need a universal motor for a power source, the mentioned Herbach & Rademan have odd lots of motors, Surplus Center in Lincoln, NE, is another source, C&H Sales is another old-timer surplus joint. Depending on the physical size you need, a treadmill motor might do. The chainsaw motors are built cheap and probably would take a lot of adapting to mount for some other duty.

Stan

C&H Sales is mostly electronics. C&H _Surplus_ is more mechanical. That's probably what you meant.

Bob

Mendelson's in Dayton, Ohio always had a huge assortment of motors, from hobby, to 50 HP three phase. It would be worth his time to make a trip there some day. Maybe early on a Saturday. The first floor of the building was surplus hardware. It's a six & a half floor building that's a full city block.

Big, naw... just a mere 1E6ft^2

It was a factory for Kettering; so it started out with lots of motors....

One of many factory buildings they have owned in Dayton. One was on Linden Ave in the '60s. Others were NCR buildings, and they were always buying industrial surplus. The current building was a plumbing supply business before they bought it. The top (Half block) floor held their security business. At one time they were doing over 100 MILLION dollars a year in the used equipment & surplus business. The selection of motors was different, every time I went there. At one time that was about once a month. They used to claim to have over a million pounds of harware for sale, on the ground floor.

Mendelson's in Dayton, Ohio always had a huge assortment of motors, from hobby, to 50 HP three phase. It would be worth his time to make a trip there some day. Maybe early on a Saturday. The first floor of the building was surplus hardware. It's a six & a half floor building that's a full city block.