iDRY Vacuum Kilns

Sponsors:

Getting closer to buying a real planer

Started by Brad_bb, December 09, 2019, 07:32:06 PM

Previous topic - Next topic

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

doc henderson

nice to have at least two expert opinions.  thanks @Nebraska  &  @WDH  .  @GeneWengert-WoodDoc 
Timber king 2000, 277c track loader, PJ 32 foot gooseneck, 1976 F700 state dump truck, JD 850 tractor.  2007 Chevy 3500HD dually, home built log splitter 18 horse 28 gpm with 5 inch cylinder and 32 inch split range with conveyor powered by a 12 volt tarp motor

YellowHammer

Planer dust is a total mess.  The best way I can describe it is to take a couple spray cans of bright orange marking paint, tape some M80's to their sides, put it where your dust collection pipe exit will be, and blow them up.  That's where the sawdust is going.  

I've tried lots of things to contain the high velocity sawdust coming from the blower exit and the only thing that worked was spinning it out in a open cyclone. Otherwise,  20 yard by 20 yard mess of wind blown sawdust, muddy tracks where I had to get the loader in to scoop and carry it off, and dead and nuked grass where the sawdust acidified the soil and killed everything it landed on.

Here are a couple fails on my part.  


 Here's me trying to get it into a dump  trailer.  A lot of missing.  Notice all the dead grass and dirt from overspray.  I originally tried to use the trailer like a box, but that didn't work, so I opened up the top and that didn't work well either. I tried putting an open canvas bag on the blower end pipe but that still wasn't any good.  



 
So then I tried going directly into a dump truck, that worked ok but still a total mess.

So I finally ended up with an open cyclone and forklift dump hopper and that works the best I have tried, by far.  My overspray has just about disappeared and the grass is growing back.  Easy to dump and maintain.  





By the way, I had as many as 30 cows and three horses and they never seemed to be bothered by the sawdust, you can see one grazing in the background.  However, I never had them penned up where they got full exposure or had to stand in it for any length of time.  They did gave to walk though it occasionally when I fed them in the corral.  Without doubt, wet sawdust outside is a nasty stinking mess and is to be avoided unless you blow it in a pile away away from everything else.  
YellowHammerisms:

Take steps to save steps.

If it won't roll, its not a log; it's still a tree.  Sawmills cut logs, not trees.

Kiln drying wood: When the cookies are burned, they're burned, and you can't fix them.

Sawing is fun for the first couple million boards.

Be smarter than the sawdust

doc henderson

It has become amazing to me how many docs have chickens.  Your volume may exceed the need.  I get smart sacks and when full I ask around and can at least give it away.  
Timber king 2000, 277c track loader, PJ 32 foot gooseneck, 1976 F700 state dump truck, JD 850 tractor.  2007 Chevy 3500HD dually, home built log splitter 18 horse 28 gpm with 5 inch cylinder and 32 inch split range with conveyor powered by a 12 volt tarp motor

petefrom bearswamp

photo of my Bridgewood 20" spiral head

 
Kubota 8540 tractor, FEL bucket and forks, Farmi winch
Kubota 900 RTV
Polaris 570 Sportsman ATV
3 Huskies 1 gas Echo 1 cordless Echo vintage Homelite super xl12
57 acres of woodland

WDH

My planer and jointer shavings fall into a nice pile.  I don't do sawdust from the mill with the blower.  I still drag off the mill sawdust and spread it out with the box blade on the tractor. 
Woodmizer LT40HDD35, John Deere 2155, Kubota M5-111, Kubota L2501, Nyle L53 Dehumidification Kiln, and a passion for all things with leafs, twigs, and bark.  hamsleyhardwood.com

Brad_bb

When you plane, besides the nice planer shavings, there is also a fine dust produced.
Anything someone can design, I can sure figure out how to fix!
If I say it\\\\\\\'s going to take so long, multiply that by at least 3!

doc henderson

I do not know anything about respiratory problems and horses.  the heavy chips will fall out, and that can be enhanced by a centrifugal separation. Sounds like your concern is the fine dust that remains suspended and would not have time to be diluted before ending up near the horses.  You also cannot slow the air flow at the end, cause it will slow the entire velocity of the system and you will be clogging things up. sounds like you will need bags or cartages to filter the fine dust.  or put the air exhaust in an area to not affect your ponies.  Maybe a cover to your box, that is like filter fabric, but it will have to be out of the elements.  and the design should be easy to clean. maybe hit it with a stick.  I know there are companies (adds in wood working mags)  that make custom collector bags.  just throwing out ideas.  someone needs to make a machine to compress and bag wood chips.  do you now someone with an old trash truck?  Might be good to estimate your volume and how often you want to empty your bin ect.  best regards Bryan.
Timber king 2000, 277c track loader, PJ 32 foot gooseneck, 1976 F700 state dump truck, JD 850 tractor.  2007 Chevy 3500HD dually, home built log splitter 18 horse 28 gpm with 5 inch cylinder and 32 inch split range with conveyor powered by a 12 volt tarp motor

tule peak timber

To avoid a variety of liability issues I don't allow the dust or shavings to leave here.I push everything into a canyon and compost it all out. Every few years I load some of the compost into the manure spreader and use it for weed abatement.Water here is precious and the compost helps hold soil moisture.
persistence personified - never let up , never let down

farmfromkansas

The local sale barn uses sawdust to put on the floor of their sale ring.  Kind of dusty in the seats there.  There is also a sign in the shack where you pick up your calves, sawdust so much per bag.  Don't know what variety of sawdust it is.
Most everything I enjoy doing turns out to be work

petefrom bearswamp

Here is a pic of my chip wagon.
Made from an old manure spreader
I  haul it up to my waste pile when full and shovel it off.
Takes about an hr all told, but I only have to do it once or twice a year.




 
Kubota 8540 tractor, FEL bucket and forks, Farmi winch
Kubota 900 RTV
Polaris 570 Sportsman ATV
3 Huskies 1 gas Echo 1 cordless Echo vintage Homelite super xl12
57 acres of woodland

farmfromkansas

About this dust collection, a cyclone system needs to be sealed to work correctly if what I read is right, so should you not put a sheet of plywood on top of your bin and connect the cyclone with a hose?  That would surely cut down on the dust problem.  My shop has a cyclone, and I just exhaust the air, no noticeable dust unless I let it overflow my barrel.
Most everything I enjoy doing turns out to be work

YellowHammer

Actually, a cyclone can be operated on either the pressure side or the vacuum side.  Most all woodworking cyclones with dust cans work on the suction side and must be sealed to work correctly.  The dust is sucked into the hose, then into the cyclone, and the heavies and most dust is spun out, and then into the motor impellor which operates with the clean air.  That allows a higher effiency impellor because it does not have to deal with trash.

I set my cyclone up in reverse, on the exhaust side so I don't need any kind of sealed container.  The debris gets pulled into the suction pipe, through the impellor, which is heavy duty and designed as a "trash" impeller, then the air and debris shoots out into the cyclone and is spun out the bottom opening.  The mostly clean air must go around a baffle and exits from the top of the cyclone.  So there is not need for a sealed container, the debris simply falls out into an open bin.



 
YellowHammerisms:

Take steps to save steps.

If it won't roll, its not a log; it's still a tree.  Sawmills cut logs, not trees.

Kiln drying wood: When the cookies are burned, they're burned, and you can't fix them.

Sawing is fun for the first couple million boards.

Be smarter than the sawdust

busenitzcww


Brad_bb

But @YellowHammer , that exhaust air from the cyclone contains fine dust, no?
@busenitzcww that would be a hijack.
Anything someone can design, I can sure figure out how to fix!
If I say it\\\\\\\'s going to take so long, multiply that by at least 3!

doc henderson

@Brad_bb yes.  can look at a cartridge or bags.  Oneida and others sell components.  I think they can hep you size it for the flow that you anticipate or pipe the exhaust well away from your animals.  @customsawyer
Timber king 2000, 277c track loader, PJ 32 foot gooseneck, 1976 F700 state dump truck, JD 850 tractor.  2007 Chevy 3500HD dually, home built log splitter 18 horse 28 gpm with 5 inch cylinder and 32 inch split range with conveyor powered by a 12 volt tarp motor

Brad_bb

@doc henderson , I am looking at doing a bag house inside for the regular system.  I just think It will be difficult at best to try to bag house the beam planer and stationary planer.  I think they would quickly overwhelm any system with their volume.  But I will do a consult with like Donaldson Torit, oneida.
Anything someone can design, I can sure figure out how to fix!
If I say it\\\\\\\'s going to take so long, multiply that by at least 3!

YellowHammer

Yes, the outflow pipe contains some small amount of fine dust, but for my purposes, it isn't a problem.  I could install a filter or bag on the chimney as the doc suggests and that would work but I'd have to rebalance the airflows.  The key of this system is to get as much of the high velocity air to exit the top stack so it doesn't go out the bottom of the cycle and blow chips out of the bin.  It could be done, but I haven't done it.  

The standard way to use an outside, non bag style, large volume cyclone is as a vacuum system with the use of an "airlock" which is a relatively expensive piece of machinery that sits at the bottom of the cyclone funnel, maintains vacuum, and slowly spins to dump the sawdust into a open bin.  Thats the classical and optimum way to do it, and with the airlock, it will dump directly into an open top bin with no fine sawdust loss.  Its a very nice and elegant solution, and what I was originally going to get from Oneida.  They sell several very nice solutions, of different capabilities and sizes.  The problem with that is the total system is fairly expensive (lots of suction rated metal pipe and fittings, cyclone body, motor, impeller, and airlock, and when I priced it out, it came to about $6K).  I paid $1,000 for the my cyclone body and since I already had the blower, I came way at about 1/6 the cost.  Mine works "almost" as well, but theirs will trap 100% of the sawdust.  If I had the money I would have bought their configuration, but I'm very happy with my system so, I stopped thinking about it.

I have optimized the system airflow pressures to the cyclone to limit fine dust escape, by trial and error, and maybe brought it down to a couple % at most, by weight.  Also, I pipe it out high, like in a chimney, so that any prevailing wind will catch it and disperse whatever comes out.  Its the old edge, "Solution by Dilution."  Most times, I cant even see any fine sawdust, but they will come out some.  With planer shavings, they are so heavy, I don't think I lose much with them.  Its not enough to cover the ground or leave any other significant residue.  The grass is growing where it never used to grow, you can see it on the photos of how the dead grass circle has closed to about the footprint of the bin, so that is good enough for me and my cows.  

I've tried shooting out out into the field in a big pile, it definately works.  However, there is a great big pipe extending out into space, which I had for awhile, but I just didn't like the look of it.  Just me.  Also there is a big pile on the ground, and the cows used to play in it, making it even messier.  I also didn't like having to spend time scooping the sawdust with the loader bucket and carrying it off to dump it.  It rutted up my pasture and made a total mess and killed my grass.  I tried going into a bin, that didn't work to my satisfaction, still very messy, I tried a bunch of things, and this is the first thing that works well for my situation.

It turns out that Oneida had never run their cyclones in reverse.  So I talked with their designers, and they said yeah it it should work, but they wouldn't warrant it because I wasn't using their vacuum configuration with their clean air impellers and they do not sell a trash impeller.  OK, no problem, I got this, just sell me the cyclone body and I'll be happy. :D  

I had already bought a trash impeller blower from Timerking/Woodmaster and knew its capabilities to digest sawdust like a beast.

I hooked it all up and played with it for a little while, (there is an old thread on this) and over time, it works better than I expected.  No airlock, no bags, to fuss, no drama.  When the bin gets full, I put the loader forks into the pockets, and drive off with it, dump it and come back.  My grass is green and I don't have to empty bags.  


YellowHammerisms:

Take steps to save steps.

If it won't roll, its not a log; it's still a tree.  Sawmills cut logs, not trees.

Kiln drying wood: When the cookies are burned, they're burned, and you can't fix them.

Sawing is fun for the first couple million boards.

Be smarter than the sawdust

alan gage

I see over on Sawmill creek there's a guy in Ohio selling a near new 22" Powermatic with helical cutter as well as a nearly new 16" Powermatic jointer with helical cutter. Both are single phase.

I can't remember if we're supposed to post links to things like that or not so I'll let you find it yourself. If you don't see them PM me and I'll send you the links.

Alan
Timberking B-16, a few chainsaws from small to large, and a Bobcat 873 Skidloader.

Larry

These are real planers.







The first two pictures are a Buss which has a 25 HP main motor and a 15 HP feed motor.  The third picture is a little Newman which only has a 15 HP motor.

They belong to a friend that re-habs and sells old US iron.

I keep thinking about buying the Newman but its still not big enough to do slabs so no real benefit over what I already have.  The other downside is you would need a similar size jointer or run the wood on a sled through the planer.
Larry, making useful and beautiful things out of the most environmental friendly material on the planet.

We need to insure our customers understand the importance of our craft.

teakwood

Quote from: YellowHammer on December 10, 2019, 01:48:13 PM
Bed rollers are almost necessary for planing rough sawn wood.  If they are not up, then the unplaned rough downward face will catch the smooth bed and hang, or cause undue parasitic drag and rob hp when you need it most, on a high spot on rough sawn lumber.  So when raised, they make planing rough sawn wood much easier and allow deeper cuts.  

However, bed rollers should be dropped into the bed when finish planing so that the smooth face of the board will be fully supported by the cast iron and smooth bed.  Why pay for a nice flat cast iron planer bed if the board never actually touches it because its always riding on the bed rollers?  A fixed position bed roller planer is a compromise, but can't be quickly optimized to do either.

The better planers have a lever that adjusts the bed rollers easily, on the fly, to account for such issues.  So skip planing is done with the bed rollers up, finish planing his done with the bed rollers down.  

As an example, at couple years back I was a guys place where an inexperienced operator was doing a demo on a very nice SCMI commercial planer.  He had been feeding in rough sawn stock and had the bed rollers up, as they should have been for rough sawn wood, but when he fed some already planed finished stock into it, there was some pretty good entry and exit snipe.  Onlookers were less than impressed.  So I went over, while the machine was feeding, grabbed the bed roller lever and and dropped the bed rollers into the bed and the following boards came out mirror flat.    Entry snipe is generally a sign of too high an infeed bed roller.

Exit snipe, on the other hand, can be caused by bed rollers, but is generally caused by an incorrect pressure bar adjustment.  So looking at your diagram, as the board feeds out of the planer, the tail end of the board will exit the infeed down pressure roller.  At that point, if the pressure bar didn't exist, or is adjusted too high, the tail end of the board would only be supported by the bed and the exit pressure roller and would would tip upward into the cutter head, causing exit snipe.  With a properly adjusted pressure bar, the tail end of the board is supported by the bottom edge of the pressure bar until the board exits the planer.  So for almost the full travel of the board through the planer, the board never touches the pressure bar, only when the board exits the infeed down pressure roller will it lever up and be supported by the pressure bar.  So it follows that if the pressure bar is adjusted 1/16" higher than the board face when it is fully supported front and back, as soon the tail end of the board leaves the support of the front down pressure roller, it will rise into the cutterhead 1/16" until the pressure bar catches it and supports it down.  The jacking up of the board will cause 1/16" exit snipe.  So the pressure bar should be adjusted as close to the surface of the fully supported board as possible, but not touch it to cause parasitic hp loss.  We are talking adjustments to the thickness of a coat of paint, because that's typically when it first needs to be adjusted, assuming it was adjusted correctly at the factory, because after a few boards the paint will rub off on the bottom flange of the pressure bar and the extra clearance will cause snipe.  

If you have to support a board exiting the planer with your hands, i.e. lift up on the board to control or eliminate snipe, it means the pressure bar isn't doing its job, or the pressure bar springs are set too soft.  Or the planer doesn't even have one.

All this assumes the outfeed roller is metal, so if it is rubber or poly, like a lot of the smaller planers, when the board exits the planer, the roller will flex, and the board will become unsupported and cause snipe.

The chip breaker does just that, but it also serves as a pressure bar when a board is being fed into a planer.  It keeps a board from being jammed right into the cutter head.

In my experience, Byrd and carbide insert cutters can only take 3/16" cut per pass due to the way they are mounted to the head and how much clearance they have.  So they can take 1/8" per pass, no problem, as long as there is enough horsepower.  Most planers don't have the hp to cut max advertised depth and width at the same time.  Yes a Shelix will take 1/8" per pass no problem.  Thats generally where I set my planer.  Yes, a 20 inch planer will feed a 20 inch board.  But...no, a 5 hp planer will not take off 1/8" of white oak on a 20" wide board.  It may take 1/8" on a piece if basswood or cedar 20 inches wide, or it may 1/16" on a 20 inch red oak board, but as in all things, HP is king.

So that is also where having a planer with a variable feed rate is important, you can slow the feed rate down and easily plane wide boards, or speed up and take wide finish cuts faster.

Another thing to look for are what's called segmented infeed systems.  These are designed to take boards of slightly different thicknesses and feed them all in at the same time, because the infeed roller isn't just a solid bar that will only grab the highest board, it is segmented into sections, generally about 2 inches wide, each section being spring loaded, and will grab all the boards, much like the suspension in a 4WD vehicle.  It will enable the routine feeding of multiple boards at once, basically multiplying the planer's throughput.  Say the you had a bunch or 4 inch wide rough sawn boards, all maybe maybe 1/16" or even 1/8" different thickness because the sawmill was cutting some slight waves.  A solid infeed planer could only feed one board at a time, so there is 16" of wasted capacity in a 20" planer, sequentially feeding 4 inch boards, head to tail.  If the planer has a segmented cutterhead, multiple boards could the fed at the same time, up the capacity of the throat and horsepower, and could, for example, easily feed 4 boards at once, for 4 times the production.  

A 5 hp planer will take 1/8" off an 8 inch wide walnut or red oak board until you get tired of feeding them or the cutters get dull. Year after year.  

About 7.5 hp is about the biggest 220/240 volt motor that is still single phase.

Never stack the ends of wood to be planed on concrete, or any other surface, for that matter.  The corners and edges of the boards will pick up dirt, grit and crud from the floor and will dull the carbide inserts much quicker that if the boards are stacked on carts or dollies.  We increased the service live of our carbides maybe 25% by doing that simple thing.    

Here is an example of us planing rough sawn cedar, a couple boards at a time a few years ago.  We could never do this on a non segmented cutter head.  Notice how we use the carts.  

hoibby hardwood planing cedar - Yahoo Search Results Video Search Results
I thought with at least 800h behind a planer i had vast experience with planing, but wow, did i learn some things from yellowhammers post! that's why i love the FF. thanks 
I have the same 20" planer that has been discussed here on this tread. it's a shop fox, i did upgrade with the grizzly spiral head which is expensive but worth every penny, IMO.
i have put tons of wood thru it and it works fine, but i do have the snipe problem which i will try to attack with the new info from yellowhammer. the planer is ok for furniture making and pro/ hobby use.
but now i'm starting to sell my own teakwood and some customers want them planed (more because teak needs to be worked with carbide tools, HSS won't work) and the planer has come to its limitations, definitely not made for commercial use. i have stalled it and with just 5mm max planing capacity for 6" wide beams, 5hp is just not enough.
would need 24" wide, separated infeed roller and all the other luxuries a real planer has, but it's hard to justify a 6-8k bill for a new planer.
National Stihl Timbersports Champion Costa Rica 2018

Thank You Sponsors!