PSA: I was running my cutterhead way too slow for years

I was dredging a silt channel in the Sacramento Delta, always keeping the head at about 12 RPM to be 'gentle'. A new guy on the crew, who used to work on a Great Lakes ore boat, asked me point blank, 'Why are you babying it? You're just letting the material settle back in.' He was right. I bumped it to 18 RPM and my production jumped by a third in a single shift. Has anyone else had a foreman drill a too-slow habit into them that was actually hurting output?

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2 Comments

the_hannah6mo ago

Wasn't there a study on how slow conveyor belts cause the same problem?

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lane.anna6mo ago

Yeah, that's a different thing. The study was about belt SPEED, not the cutterhead.

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