The making of Pinetree Pellet Fuels Maine softwood pellets.. The Mill..

[PinetreePellets]

Ahh, Sorry, I'm slow on Mondays

All good Bogie, I am slow any day ending in Y

 

[PinetreePellets]

If you're still looking for a sprinkler contractor.. Guy I went to school with for 12 years took over his dad's business. High Tech Fire Protection. I'm not sure technically if they are in Poland or Mechanic Falls. Richard Smith is the guy I know. Might be worth a phone call.

I don't burn pellets, but I love the idea that you're going to be a local business. People should be happy to pay your price. I love the idea of my money staying local. Then you keep your money banging around in your town. Guy that works at the mill buys a car from the local dealer. That guy goes to lunch at the diner. On and on.

Best of luck to you.

JP

TY JP for the recommendation, the second i have gotten from Hearth forum, love this place

Will def give them a jingle

 

[SidecarFlip]

If I wasn't almost 1000 miles from you, I'd bring up a tractor trailer and bring back 24 ton or so. I like to support American owned and operated businesses.

I believe you'll do just fine in yur new enterprise.

 

[PinetreePellets]

If I wasn't almost 1000 miles from you, I'd bring up a tractor trailer and bring back 24 ton or so. I like to support American owned and operated businesses.

I believe you'll do just fine in yur new enterprise.

I can fit a few bag in the trunk of my car!! ROADTRIP..

 

[boo boo]

Ant she pretty

View attachment 157738

Are you going to use auto stacking of the bags or man handle? safety first

 

[SidecarFlip]

Safety first or expense first....

I'd be manually stacking when starting out, auto pallet stackers are an unneeded expense IMO.

When I was younger, I stacked 50 pound bags of seed corn on pallets for a seed operation down the road, 40 bags to the pallet, 20 pallets a day. Thats great exercise and a great way to consume beer on a hot day.

Builds character....
Develops a hard body....
Attracts the ladies....
Makes you drink more beer......

 

[PinetreePellets]

Are you going to use auto stacking of the bags or man handle? safety first

Hey Boo. We will have employees stacking manually. To address your question we will have a pallet lift which is hydraulically controlled to the workers most comfortable position by the worker. We are only talking 1 bag every min, we will be required to conform to OSHA standards to make sure our workers don't injure themselves.

We decided to go this route because a robot doesn't have mouths to feed and this helped us make the decision. It is also more cost effective to not have an automatic stacker, not saying we wont down the road if we find our workers are getting burned out, but for now its more cost effective and we can employ folks who need work.

 

[Jags]

We use something like this for lifting buckets and bags. Not horrible cost wise. It might be something to look into...
http://www.vacuumlifter.eu/
They can be mounted with a simple swing crane setup. Lifts 175# if I remember correctly. They have different weight capacities.

Just like this:

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[ScotL]

These work pretty well.
(broken link removed)

 

[PinetreePellets]

These work pretty well.
(broken link removed)

yes I have seen this on Global Industries. I like the vac handler, gotta price some out.

 

[PinetreePellets]

 

[johneh]

So now the hard part starts Good Luck hope everything falls into place

 

[Mpodesta]

Awesome!

 

[JP11]

Congrats to you. Hit the ground running and don't slow down!

 

[PinetreePellets]

Thank you all for the well wishes. Like John said "now the hard part starts", but I am elated that my dream of someday owning a pellet mill is coming to fruition and that day when i can hit the start button is still a few months away but withing reach. I have been pretty busy just getting to this point, securing contracts, building purchase, that I haven't been able to post as much as I wanted but I wanted to be the first to let you all know that I plan on setting up a webcam in the mill during renovation to show the progress live. You will be able to see the mill assembly as it is taking place (and some frustration and possibly a few swear words). I am having internet installed soon and the webcams will be up as well, as soon as they are you will get a link.

Sorry for the quick post but I hope you all have a safe and relaxing weekend celebrating the 4th!!

 

[ScotL]

My best advice for you is to design with room for expansion in mind. Don't let the engineers design to minimum specs for your desired capacity.

You'll need spare room in the PLC and cable trays and MCC rooms as well as options to increase throughput later on - probably in a couple years.

Discovering and eliminating bottlenecks early on will help a lot.

 

[St_Earl]

i bicycled through mattawamkeag a week or so ago. looked cursorily around but didn't see the building.
did 49 miles that day.

 

[smwilliamson]

Hey Boo. We will have employees stacking manually. To address your question we will have a pallet lift which is hydraulically controlled to the workers most comfortable position by the worker. We are only talking 1 bag every min, we will be required to conform to OSHA standards to make sure our workers don't injure themselves.

We decided to go this route because a robot doesn't have mouths to feed and this helped us make the decision. It is also more cost effective to not have an automatic stacker, not saying we wont down the road if we find our workers are getting burned out, but for now its more cost effective and we can employ folks who need work.

The auto stacker will eventually allow you to hire more people doing other tasks.

 

[BrotherBart]

Rock and roll.

 

[PinetreePellets]

i bicycled through mattawamkeag a week or so ago. looked cursorily around but didn't see the building.
did 49 miles that day.

Graham Ln.. All the way to the end (before you hit the river)

 

[PinetreePellets]

Was just south of Bangor at a big box store and saw these. Price seemed high for offseason.

(broken image removed)

 

[PinetreePellets]

Hello all. Figured I'd throw this out to anyone in my area (Maine). I am in need of a wheel loader and forklift. They don't need to be pretty or perfect just be able to operate.

If you are in the area and have one sitting around or know of someone who may have one please send me a PM and we can chat.

Also looking for a non roadworthy walking floor or bottom dump trailer. Hit me up if you got one.

Thanks guys
David

 

[NateB]

We used these time lapse cameras, and they worked very well. You can also put a motion activated sensor on them if needed. Web cams are great, but the time lapse I found much more interesting.

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/buy/c.../N/3780644652?origSearch=construction cameras

 

[PinetreePellets]

We used these time lapse cameras, and they worked very well. You can also put a motion activated sensor on them if needed. Web cams are great, but the time lapse I found much more interesting.

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/buy/construction-cameras/ci/28014/N/3780644652?origSearch=construction cameras

I have security motion sensors and cameras but will get one for the mill once we are at the stage where exciting things are happening.

I just wanted to give you all an update on the mill as it has been a while and I have been busy. A Lot of the stuff is backend boring (but needs to be done) stuff. Getting accounts established, bag design and a few other surprises. Timeline was Octoberish for getting the equipment then a month or two for tweaks and mod and construction but as I kinda expected "perfect world" times just don't happen. As mill equipment is being manufactured I have been picking up some fun toys, forklift, bucket loader, pallet wrapper, and office swag like desks, printers, chairs, etc. I have networked up a pretty decent remote security system as well as VPN, cloud backup and website design.

Our website is up, not for orders, but for an idea of what it will eventually look like and for folks to contact us for info or email us with questions.

Oil prices have been dropping and will continue i feel for a while but that is not a deterrent but rather motivation for me to find the best quality material at the lowest prices to help keep prices down and the price of our pellets inline with oil. I have some non conventional methods I plan on utilizing to help keep my prices down and in turn the end consumer.

As far as Mattawamkeag, I've had a great reception intown. I am still the "outsider" so will take folks some time to get to know me and used to the mill. Also last month I meet with the president of Cornith Wood Pellets, they have a slick operation over there. We sat down and talked shop for an hour or so and he had some damn good advice for me in certain aspects of the mill operation. Cornith is about 10x's the size i will ever be but I never started out with intentions to become a huge operation, but Cornith is doing it right and are in a totally different league then this little mill i am starting, but I am ok with that.

A few other things up my sleeve that I will discuss in a future post. I did start Twitter, FB and G+ accounts for Pinetree Pellet Fuels. So I wont post the links here but can find them on our website if ya wanna keep up with the day to day (TBH i post more here then the 3 combine, lol).

Well guess that's it for now. Here is a picture of my pallet wrapper, great machine. Highly recommend Predator SS wrappers

 

[JP11]

Love the fact that the 'big guy' doesn't see you as competition, but offered good advice. That's class right there.

JP