Old timer told me to run my cutterhead slower in clay, he was right

Had a guy named Pete at the yard in Mobile tell me to drop my cutterhead speed to 12 RPM in stiff clay. I thought he was crazy, but I tried it on a job last month and the production went up by 15 cubic yards per hour. Anyone else get advice from an old hand that actually paid off?

3 comments

3 Comments

smith.elliot7d agoMost Upvoted

That's a good story. I had a similar thing happen with a old dredge operator named Frank down in Corpus Christi. He told me to slow my swing speed way down in hard packed sand, and I thought he was just being slow from age. But sure enough, my cutter was lasting twice as long and I wasn't burning through teeth like before. It's funny how those little tweaks from guys who've been doing it for decades can make such a huge difference in production.

danielm807d ago

Yeah, you nailed it with "little tweaks from guys who've been doing it for decades." I had a similar thing with an old hand named Pete up in the Great Lakes on a hopper dredge. He had me stop running the pump at full throttle all the time in clay. I figured he was just taking it easy, but he showed me if you back off just a hair and let the stuff break up naturally, you don't plug the pipe near as often. Saved us hours of downtime every week after that.

hannahcraig7d agoTop Commenter

Remember that time we tried running hard packed sand wide open, @smith.elliot?