Fellow ML392 Owners

[BobR]

My new toy is becoming a bit of a challenge. Not sure if it is just me, or I have a Friday afternoon/Monday morning machine. Running work over the jointer I find that on a piece of raw timber 25mm thick, I end up after smoothing a 200mm wide piece of Mountain Ash, the side nearest the fence being about 3mm more narrow than the outside. I have reset the blades using the Carba-Tec PSJ-01 Planer Blade Setting Jig - still have the problem. After making the infeed and outfeed tables level, I placed a straight edge on the infeed table so that it extended over the outfeed table. This was carried out both near the fence and near the front edge. Using a feeler gauge to measure the gap under the straight edge at each end of the outfeed table, I have four different readings, ranging from nil to 8/1000" ( don't have metric gauge). I suspect a possible warp in the outfeed table. Carba-Tec Sydney really dont understand the machines they sell, so not much help. Any suggestion here.

Now for the thicknesser. If I have to push/pull the timber through the thicknesser for much longer I am going to have sholders like weight lifter. If I use the 4x2 method to testing the movement of the output metal roller, I find that with little effort I can raise the roller on the front of the machine quite easily. However, on moving to the back of the machine (motor drive side) it is almost impossible to get any movement. I have removed the back cover and adjusted the nut ( tightned it to compress the spring up) which seems to make a little difference. Given that I have tightened it quite a bit I am now getting concerned that I may be backing the wrong horse. I noticed in another thread that others had adjusted the nut(s) associated with the springs. From those who made this adjustment, how much did you have to tighten the nut.

Hope you can help.

Bob

[Gumby]

I haven't really put mine through really acurate testing like that Bob but I know what you mean with pulling timber through the thicknesser. I found that the side on the feed table has to be very smooth so I'm assuming you are placing the side that went over the blades in jointer mode face down. You should also give it some help by waxing or applying silicon spray on the table. That makes a big difference to mine and has been covered in other threads. I also find I have to get just the right cut depth to make it go nice and smooth. If it's too deep a cut, it can jamb a bit. If it's not deep enough, there's not enough pressure on the timber from the rollers.

If it's slightly out in thickness after going over the jointer mode blades, wouldn't that be corrected by going through thiknesser mode anyway ?

[BobR]

Last point first. Yes. But when it come to going through the thicknesser with a wedge sheped cross section, the rollers appear to have difficulty in moving the timber. Unless the rollers are able to adjust to the wedge shape they are only able to grip on the small high spot. Now if I am able to fix up the jamming problem with the thicknesser rollers, this may happen.

As far the thicknesser goes. I have cleaned the thicknessing table with metho - have not waxed it though. What do you use. WRT the "bite" size - I set it to about 1/3mm using the attached scale. This has worked on some lengths. For a while everything seemed to be going OK - for about 6 lengths of timber. Then it hit the wall.

Bob

[Gumby]

There was some info on recent thread about a spray lubricant with other comments saying that you have to careful because you don't want whatever is on the table to get into your timber. I used some of ubeauts Traditional Wax which seemed good (spread on and rub off with a cloth) and I've got some silicon spray I thought I might try. I pit some treated pine through the other day with had ridges in it like they have in wall studs. The ridged side was face down and the friction caused stopped it going through unless I pulled it. It took a while to work out but I've never had one of these machines before and the instructions are a joke.

I only adjusted the spring screws on the non drive belt side (loosened them) and gave the others a spray with WD40 and then gave them a 'lift' with some pine used as a lever to get them to move more freely. You can pull back the dust port in thicknesser mode and actually pull the rollers up and down by hand as well.
As I said , I haven't really had a long play with it yet but after the initial problems caused by those rollers not feeding properly, it does seem OK now. I assumed they would loosen up with use - hope that's right , although now you've got me wondering. :confused: