Sun Joe CJ602E 15-Amp Electric Wood Chipper/Shredder, Green

I've been researching an electric wood chipper for sometime. I'm not an arborist and don't need a monster machine to take down oaks and pecans. My top priorities were branches up to 1.5" from small fruit trees and hedges. My criteria was sufficient horsepower with low noise, safe but generous feed, safe chipping chamber access, blade replacement, and easy storage. That's not asking too much. Assembly was a breeze, no missing parts. My first task was my persimmon tree (as in golf club heads). Not exactly sure of persimmon on the Janka hardness scale, but it fed well with no laboring. It worked well on my fig tree and shrubs. I did notice that old seasoned wood from ancient shrubs, with the hardness of maple was accepted, but went through choppy, if fed slowly. Regarding the noise, its claimed to be in the 115 db range. I measured the sound while running with no load at 90 db (on concrete patio). I suspect that if set on grass or soil, it would muffle and moderate the noise. Design is great, sufficient room to place a large basket under the discharge. The paddle is a safe alternative to fingers in the feed. Only design objection was the goofy storage clip for the paddle placed down near the right wheel. As I don't have 'ape arms' the storage location was relocated on the handle using a piece of industrial grade 'hook and loop' material. The attached picture shows this placement. All together, I spent 3-4 hours on my first use. With occasional breaks to rest the motor, this chipper worked like a champ!

I'm really impressed with this chipper for the price. It worked well for branches up to maybe 3/4". It did handle thicker branches, but they had to be recently cut. I had a lot of thick (1" +) branches that were dry because they were cut months to years ago. Those were so tough on the blades that I stopped chipping them. This would take such small chips off each time off large dry branches that it took way too long to do each one. It did just fine on the branches that were smaller even if they were dry.It does best with nice straight branches. I ran some recently cut oak branches and they were easy since they were nice and straight without lots of offshoots. Even the thick branches fed just fine. Other types of wood with lots of forks or branches are tough to feed as they get stuck. So it is best to get things as straight and bare as possible.I ran dry large palm frond stalks through it and those were tough because it is easy to get much wider stalks in there than rated size. And there's lots of stringy material in palm fronds which doesn't always get cut and can ball up and quickly block the chute. The first day I ran them through, I didn't notice the material blocking the chute and the material backed up into the machine and the blade dulled from being run through basically sawdust. After that I just ran the smaller pieces and watched to make sure the chute stayed clear.

During assembly I came to the step where you have to press the wheel covers onto the wheels. I aligned them correctly but no matter how hard I pressed down, they would not snap into place. The even manual stated that you may use a hammer to complete this step. So I got a hammer and carefully tapped on the wheel cover which resulted in the breaking off the little plastic pins that are supposed to snap into place. I tried several times more and ended up throwing the wheel covers away. They are just ornamental and not really needed.Now to chipping: I only tried it yet on bamboo less than 1 inch in thickness. At first, it did a great job chipping the culm into small pieces. However, the little leafed branches attached to the culm soon clogged the chipper and I ended up having to open the chipper and clear everything out. Fortunately that is easy to do. After removing the little branches and just feed the bamboo sticks into the chipper, it grabbed the sticks and chipped a portion of it before I had to push the sticks in with a little force, I had to do this several times for each 7 foot stick. Worst of all, once the stick disappeared completely into the chipper, the last 6 inches did not get caught by the blades and you have to push them down further, which is very hard to do with the completely misdesigned paddle. The chipper opening is round at one end and curved overall. The paddle for some reason is relatively flat and straight. Although the paddle fits into the opening, it is barely useful in pushing the last bit of the branches down so the rotating blades could catch them. The finger thick branches just moved to the sides of the round opening where the flat paddle could not get them. Also, there where some large splinters among the small chips.In Europe, they have electrical chippers the same size of the SunJoe, however instead of rotating blades, they have two drums that interact like cog wheels just like the very big chippers have that the tree services use. They work much better in grabbing and also holding on to branches. Maybe SunJoe should start making chippers with drums instead of blades.

I really like this machine. It has a strong motor and I'm impressed with how much it can do. It jammed twice the first time I used it, and the branches were 7/8" in diameter. There are things you have to get to know about it, but that's to be expected. If you feed large branches up to 1" (or more) you really have to hold on to them and only let it take a little at a time, pull it up off the cutter (still inside the safe area) then feed more. One reason it jammed is that when it passes the safety cover it's still several inches long, which is good safety wise, but it will fall over onto the cutters when you're no longer holding on to it. That ends up turning that 1" diameter stick into a 1 1/2" + oval. (turn a cylinder on an angle and it's a long oval) Feed something small along side it and it will keep it vertical. That can help. I learned to just chip smaller stuff. Solid machine, easy to move around, and not as loud as I expected. I always wear ear protectors anyway. Oh, and the shut off works, but the first time it jammed it threw the breaker in my panel. After that it just tripped the onboard overload protector. Reset easily.

Nice little product. Somewhat noisy -- need ear protectors. 1.5" diameter max wood diameter -- I would call that an aspirational maximum dimension. My blades got dull within half a year of small diameter chipping. With the duller blades, fresh twigs with green leaves clogged the machine. Sort of annoying to disassemble to unclog, but not too bad with practice. Then even twigs with the leaves stripped off were not chipping properly -- machine expelled too many 9" partly shredded twigs instead of all chips. A set of two new blades from the factory, with shipping and tax were about CAN$48.00. Each of the two blades is attached to a single rotating plate with two screws with recessed hexagonal heads. The largest hex key on my larger multi-hex-key tool fit the screws, and the hex-key tool handle rotates 90 degrees for leverage, but not enough. I had to use a large vice-grip to extend the handle of the hex-key tool to get sufficient torque to loosen the screws -- awkward because the screws were very tight and the rotating plate had to be held in place with a screwdriver inserted though the opposite side of the plate from the blade was I working on, into a recess below that stabilized the end of the screwdriver. All this jerry-rigged tool effort was continually needing to be precisely positioned and extreme force applied to loosen the two hex head screws holding each of the two blades in place. This was after removing a blade guard held on by eight small screws, also a little awkward to access. I was pleased to see that the blades are reversible, so my two new ones are in reserve. I got the blades off by myself but needed assistance to stabilize the rotating plate in reattaching the reversed existing blades. If I have to do this once a year I will not be pleased. Other than that major design feature -- that is, having to awkwardly and difficultly reverse or replace the blades, I am happy to recycle my plentiful woody stems, branches and twigs into useful mulch.

If you lower your expectations this is great for straight twigs and branches up to an inch. The key is fairly straight twigs. Let's be realistic. Most twigs are not that straight. I found once I used my clippers to cut the twigs into straighter pieces the chipper works great. Needless to say it adds significant time to shredding a lot of debris. It works great but not the fastest for medium to large clean-up work.

I'm impressed, this worked better than I hoped for, truly impressed. Worked it all day with no problems, excellent 👍😁Update: I am impressed enough that I bought another one, I burnt the first one out my fault, tried to force to big a branch through the machine, saw smoke coming out thought it was the branch burning, unfortunately it was the motor my bad. Oh well. Still impressed enough to buy again and I am just as impressed with this one just gotta be a little more patient 👍🤔🤔

works good.

Cheap not recommend will not do your job it will break just like my all ready dead !!! Not worth it $$$