Your video shows your blade stopping grass from wrapping around the brush cutter head and yet I still get a lot of grass wrapping around my brush cutter when using your blade?

This is a good question and worthy of a reply, as I have received two such question about this now.

To answer this question; BrushDestructor blades that have the Anti-Fouling blades do not stop grass and vines from wrapping around the gearhead, what they are designed to do is grind or slice away at them and spit them out to prevent the build-up and stalling of the brush cutter. This they now do very well, but they are not full proof, otherwise I would not be answering these questions. As you can see by the photo below, the gearhead is totally bound up, but the blade is still free to rotate.

The plus is that the Anti-Fouling blades do their intended job very well, unfortunately with every positive gain, there is a negative downside and that is power drain. This drain can leave some of the lower powered brush cutter struggling to maintain speed and as mentioned before it is those lower speeds that cause the grass to wrap around the gearhead in the first place. It was this power drain from the Anti-Fouling Blades that led to the two blades Weed Eater model, with a 50% reduction in drag from both the Flail Blade cutting teeth and the Anti-Fouling Blades.

I think that those who have experienced this problem will agree with me, that there is nothing more frustrating than having to stop, unhook and untangle this grass or vines after it has stalled your brush.

It was the frustrating nature of this problem that led to the evolution of the Anti-Fouling blades in the first place.

Below is a temporary video by MrKyle148, until I finish editing my own video. He is obviously also frustrated with this problem as he created this boringly long seven minute video showing his frustration and 7500 other frustrated people have viewed it.

The reason why grass wraps around the brush cutter gear head is a result of the rotational cutting process and can happen equally with a nylon line or steel blade. How much the grass wraps around the head depends on three things;

The type of material being cut,

The power of the brush cutter,

The design of the gear head itself.

With grass and vines, the longer, stronger, Stringier and wetter it is, the more likely it is to be dragged around the gear head and the more grass that builds up the more it attracts until there is so much build up that it stalls the brush cutter. Sometimes this can take a while to build up, but more often than not, it can happen is a second flat.

With brush cutter power, the more power you have, the less of a problem it is. Higher powered brush cutters are more able to maintain their speed when cutting through these problem grasses and vines, as the higher speeds throw the cut material out and away. With lower powered brush cutters, the speed drops off more easily, this then drags the long grass around the gear gearhead where it wraps around tighter and tighter and keeps building up until it stalls the brush cutter.

With Gearhead Design, I cannot see any evidence that the brush cutter designers and manufacturers have given any thought to this issue. Brush cutters evolved from the very first, single nylon line electric Weed Eater’s. They were designed to trim light grass around edges that a lawn mower could not do effectively. Then came the petrol driven models which gave it a greater range and more power to tackle heavier grass and weeds and now they keep throwing larger motors on them to try and solve this and some of the other issues. In my opinion, more power is not the answer; better understanding of the problems and innovative design is the solution to solving this and the other problems.

Since the very first introduction of the straight shaft gearbox, there has been very little improvement, In fact I think that as competition has got fiercer, the design and quality of the gearheads has gone backwards and there certainly hasn’t been any thought given to the grass wrapping around the gearhead problem.

I am speculating here, but I think that this may be because the countries where most of the brush cutters are made, like Germany, Sweden, Japan and China have long since irradiated these pesky weeds so they are not aware of the problem. Before starting on BrushDestructor Products, I had contacted some of these companies, mentioning these problems, so that they could look at addressing these in future designs, unfortunately I was not even dignified with a reply to my emails. 

I should mention here, that one of the disadvantages of the BrushDestructor blade is that this wrapping tendency is increased for the following reasons.

Firstly; it cuts so much better than any other blades and this waste needs to be cleared unfortunately some plastic guards actually restrict, instead of assist the clearing of all this waste.

Secondly; the heads of the pivot nuts and bolts snag grass and drag it around the gear head.

CLick the photo below if you would like to find out more about the Problem, Cause and Solution to grass and vines wrapping around the gearhead and stalling the brushcutter.

 

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