MyDealer:
The BC1200XL wood chipper offers the safety features you expect from Vermeer, as well as SmartFeed and an optional winch.
The guys from Vermeer brought me the new BC1200XL wood chipper for my latest road test and I was ready for it, with five dead eucalyptus trees I’d taken down on a rural property.
We put the BC1200XL straight to work on all the dead limbs of the trees. The dual horizontal offset feed rollers grabbed and fed the large 20-inch diameter chipping drum with ease. The offset bottom safety, I have to mention the bump feed stop bar that is fitted to the feed table: it’s always a good safety feature of the Vermeer chipper range. The chipper we tested was fitted with an 110hp Cummins tier 3 diesel engine. This machine is also available with a smaller 85hp diesel engine, depending on your budget or requirement. The BC1200XL has all the features of a larger chipper but in a feed roller not only assists in this process but it also helps reduce the logs and branches kicking back up at the operator. It also has a powerful 1632.9kg pull that, thanks to a dual-pump hydraulic system, is ideal for when you are feeding larger and heavier logs.
To help with the larger logs and branches, the BC1200XL can be fitted with a 907.2kg winch with a 45.7m line.We put this to good use, dragging the trunks into the machine and lifting them effortlessly onto the feed table. This winch system has a great new safety feature that stops the feed rollers while the winch is being operated. The line must be reconnected to the interlock hook before you can start feeding the machine, which eliminates any chance of losing the line through the chipper drum. In talking about safety, I have to mention the bump feed stop bar that is fitted to the feed table: it’s always a good safety feature of the Vermeer chipper range.
The chipper we tested was fitted with an 110hp Cummins tier 3 diesel engine. This machine is also available with a smaller 85hp diesel engine, depending on your budget or requirement. The BC1200XL has all the features of a larger chipper but in a lighter and more compact sized machine. Like its big brother, the BC1500XL, it runs the Vermeer SmartFeed system that automatically stops and starts the feed and reverses, as required to maintain engine revs, reducing wear on the engine and feed system.
Although the BC1200XL is classed as a 12-inch chipper it has the capacity to chip material up to 13.3 inches by 17 inches wide. This is due to its in-feed throat size, and we made sure it was capable of this with the hard deadwood logs that we fed it on the test day. I was very impressed by its performance.
If you are in the market for a 12-inch capacity wood chipper that is capable of much more, the BC1200XL is a powerful machine that will not disappoint. I know I definitely wasn’t disappointed.
