Carbatec 15" Thicknesser CTJ-680

[Soren]

I am seriously looking at getting this unit, CTJ-680, being a 3HP 3 knife unit. Any comments on this unit would be appreciated.

[Ashy]

I am thinking of getting this unit as well Soren. Looks like a decent unit, nice and solid. Probably not worth spending the extra $200 to get the ctj-381 unless you have two people to feed stock back over top rollers. I figure anyway! I nearly bought one at Brisbane ww show...they were on special for ....i can't quite remember but i think it was $995!! Good machine for price I believe. I have the 8" jointer ctj-350 and it is great! Although blades seemed to blunt pretty quick after planing some pretty hard timber. Maybe it is worth fitting the tungsten blades?? any ideas anyone?

[MarkV]

I haven't got one but I too am intending to purchase one next year. They look nice and solid with good in/ outfeed tables and plenty of weight to keep them in place ;) . The price for my money beats the smaller Makita's and Dewalt type benchtop units handsdown Come on Guru's what's the scoop?

[GC]

Can I suggest you price tungsten blades first.

My in law uses ONLY tungsten but they are about $240 (from memory) for his metabo.

Let me know what price you come up with, I'd be interested to know.

good luck - GC

[Ashy]

Carbatec have the 'Blade-15-T 15" HSS Blade with 18% Tungsten, Set of 3' $120

I'm Tipping that there's someting out there better with some looking? But still it sounds o.k.

[Justin]

If you haven't already done so, search this site for "CTJ-680" . I have one, and have left some comments in a previous thread.


Regards,


Justin.

[gatiep]

I notice in their Cat. they list a set of Tungsten blades for the thicknesser at $120-00. These blades contain 18% tungsten mixed in HSS. This is not an added piece of tungsten, but the whole blade is made up of the mixture.

HSS blades are $80 per set in their Cat.

[Ian007]

I have one from Leda not the same model number but the same machine

I am very happy with it

Cheers Ian

[zymurgy]

I have one, very happy - and I can tell you, it's a heavy mother.

[bill_h]

I picked one up a few months ago and it turns out to be a dead ringer for Ian007's unit except fo the gearbox fill attachment.

Ian also kindly provided me with setup instructions and it works a treat

The manufacture date says 1986. I guess the design must be popular

Bill

[Ian007]

So Bill where is your gearbox fill point on your machine?
or was it that bolt hole?

Cheers Ian :) :)

[bill_h]

There's a little inspection window/bubble where your fill plug is.

It's a snug friction fit and I just prised it out

[JackG]

I recently purchased one of these units and I am very happy with it however there is a few little annoying things.

1. The infeed roller is not rubber like most the small planers it is a steel serated roller and you need to take at least 0.3mm else it will leave big marks on the timber. In other words you cant feed the piece again to get that superb finish or if you have a stack of stock you are processing make sure you dont feed the same piece twice.

2. The pressure applied by the rollers is very strong and it will flatten pretty much anything you feed trough it so you can forget about taking the cupping of boards doing small passes, you need to do it on the joiner.

3. When you turn on the dust extraction on it makes a lot of noise, in fact the wind noise is louder than the cutting or engine noise, increasing the gap between the chips collection blade reduces the noise a bit but of course you loose efficiency.

4. Minimum thickness you can plane is 6mm and I wish it was 3 or 4, I am not sure what are capabilities of other planers.


Outside of that it is a great machine, it has 0 snipe and it was properly adjusted out of the box and the only painful thing was to remove all the protective grease :)

Cheers

[stevepay]

I have to agree with the others, I've had mine for just over a year and have had no problems with it, it is extremely heavy ( if you can organise some mates to help it will save your back) but this is also one of its strong points as it will not move around, I have mine on locking castors and this works fine.

it is correct to say you cannot do small cuts to clean up a face as the infeed roller will leave small marks unless you take a reasonable ammount off and then there is no problem, I usually finish off with other tools so this is not an issue for me.

I have run bucket loads of old jarrah posts and floorboards through this machine and it eats it up without a hiccup, I highly recommend these units for serious planeing.

Regards

Steve :o