Using an edger to prepare flooring blanks?

[CHill8903]

Is anyone using an edger to successfully prepare flooring blanks for a moulder?  If so is it a belt or roller feed? I currently use a straight line rip saw which does a great job but I'm looking at an edger as potentially cutting our ripping time in half if it is accurate enough. It would serve the mill also obviously, but we've always edged on the mill because I couldn't justify an edger just for green lumber.

[Southside]

Use my Riehl for exactly that. I had them make me fine cut blades and a custom, adjustable left fence.  Lumber stays within 1/16" all day long, double roller feed mechanism. 

[CHill8903]

The Riehl looks like a very good value for the money. What size motor do you have?  How do you use your left fence?  On my SLR I have a laser, 1st pass with the laser on the right side of the board, 2nd pass against the fence(right side) to cut to dimension. I was thinking of setting up a laser over the fixed blade to get the same result in 1 pass.

[Southside]

I have a 25 HP Kohler on mine, Darin put it on at my request.  My fixed blade is set 4" out from the left side for edging flitches.  The custom fence Darin made for me is bolted to top of the left frame rail of the edger.  It folds up and out of the way, or down and into place and it slides along a pair of axis so it is adjustable for how much it removes.  I can take off between 1/4" and 3/4" off the left side using the fence, set the adjustable blade to the desired width, and one pass the board is done, this is all material that comes out of the kiln.  If I need to take off more than 3/4" I just flip the fence out of the way and have up to 4" of clearance on the left side.  

I could see where adding a laser to the fixed blade would be useful for when the fence is flipped up. As you can see from my profile info I am a Wood-Mizer guy, however Riehl makes a really, really, good machine and it was by design that I bought mine.  

A friend has a belt fed edger and has told me he can't even begin to keep his material to the tolerances I keep, I don't know if it's just his machine or the difference in how they operate.  I tried edging on the sawmill ahead of the moulder and that was a disaster, no where near consistent enough.  Had a guy with an SLR do a couple loads for me and the results were mixed - I suspect it was due to the operator not paying attention.  

I spray paint the index wheel on my edger with orange paint and when running a load will mark the appropriate pin hole with a sharpie, this way if I need to move the adjustable blade for what ever reason (usually I have mixed width orders) I can get right back to my desired set without having to measure, double check, etc as the holes correspond to a 1/16" blade move.  

[CHill8903]

Thanks for all the helpful info, it sounds like you're doing exactly what I have in mind!

[scsmith42]

I use a Woodmizer twin blade edger to prep blanks for the moulder.  It works great and is faster than the SLR.

Mine is a 15hp 480VAC electric model.  You have to edge both sides at the same time unless your blanks are really straight.