I am getting ready to purchase a planer and have been looking at the Extrema EP 20 with stealth head which has one bed roller directly under the head, and the Grizzly GO544 with spiral head which appears to have a bed roller under each feed roller.
I am looking for opinions about what experience anyone has had with each planer.
Anyone want to comment on the reasoning for one roller/two roller configurations?
BB,
The planer with a bed roller under each drive roll will feed better since it reduces drag on the material being planed.
The planer with one bed roller under the cutter head may reduce the snipe(sp) that occures on the end of the material being planed.
i own the little brother to the G0544, the G0551
and like the 0544 the bed rollers are under the in and out feed drive rollers
i and found this setup to work just fine
one more thing
my planer has 3 knivers and my jointer has the inserts
i wanted the jointer with knives but there was a long long back order
takes me about an hour to remove clean the planer . remove and reset the knives
my jointer is 8 inch and takes 2 hrs to remove and clean and tweek the inserts so
there are no stripes in the cut
i know everone loves the inserts but i`d rather have knives
You couldn't get me to go back to knives with a gun. It takes about 3 to 4 hours to change or rotate the small knives in our 26" head. But it will run 20 times longer than knives. There are 4 faces to each knive. If one is knicked it takes just minutes to rotate a couple of inserts. There is a minor amount of streaking, but our customers like the fact that there is 90% less wood tears around knots compared to straight knives. We plane only cedar. Horsepower requirements are lower and noise is reduced considerably.
I would want rollers under each hold down roller to reduce friction as much as possible. But then again I have not had any experience with the planers mentioned. Ours is a Northtech.
thanks guys for the input, I do have a local distributor for Extrema, which is nice, but I have to consider the Griz as well. Maybe will look into those northtech machines.
I like Grizzly just for the simple fact I can work on it if needed or tweak it out here and there and parts availability is awesome but never needed anything except knives. A very good instruction book on adjusting too.
I have the rollers on in and outfeed and I can adjust the rollers for height in less than a minute . With roller set high I can get snipe on short boards but with a quick adjustment the snipe is gone .
I got me a 24" over and under wadkin and the rollers are under the drive
depending on what I'm putting through the rollers are set above or below the feed bed, if you set them below the bed you need to wax the bed every now and then to stop grabbing but the top finish is snipe free ,
also if the rollers are "just" above the bed for the final thickness on say flooring you can stop snipe by feeding the plank in and then lifting it so that the front edge is in contact with the bed directly below the cutter head, and the same on exit just left the the board so that the trailing edge contacts the bed under the cutter head
my rollers rise and fall at the turn of a wheel
how come it takes so long to change your knives ?
it takes about me about 15 mins to do both 24" on my machine
There are more than 280 small knives each with its own screw. These are placed in 6 spirals around the head.
nuffsaid
iain