Thread: Spiral cutter head for Electra Beckum HC 260-M

Originally Posted by Ari2

Hi all,

I am giving some thought to installing a spiral head for my for my Electra Beckum HC 260-M combination planer/thicknesser. Has anyone retro fitted one of the 'Shelix' heads to an Electra Beckum HC 260-M and if so what are the pros and cons. Did it just fit straight in or were there some complications. Cost? Noise reduction?

Look forward to your comments.

regards

Early this year I bought a CT branded Shelix style Spiral Cutter Head for my Jet 10 inch Planner/Thicknesser Combo unit. I paid extra ($250) to have the installation on the Jet JPT-260 done by a machinery fitter in Brisbane, mainly because the job required a few specialist tools to remove bearings. With the benefit of hindsight, I could have simply bought new bearings and fitted new bearings to the new cutter head, and done the job myself without needing any specialist bearing removal tools. It's probably a good idea to replace the bearings on older machines anyway. Realignment and adjustment of the machine, as far as the Jet was concerned, was straight forward, but the procedure and the time required, will obviously be different that that required on your Electra Beckum. The JPT-260M does not have a parallelogram movement on the outfeed table, so there is some additional fiddling to do, which can be avoided on machines that have a parallelogram movement on the outfeed table.

Noise wise - I don't think that the spiral cutter head is any quieter. What is different is that because the spiral cutter head makes many more cuts per cutter head revolution, than the old straight cutters, the noise made by the spiral cutters is a higher frequency, which to some people may make the spiral cutter head sound quieter in use.

Another difference, that most reviews of spiral cutter heads do not mention, is that the spiral cutter heads, because of their multiple smaller cutters arranged spirally, imposes a continuous high load on the motor, whilst the old three straight blade cutter head imposed three discrete load pulses for every rotation of the cutter head. The Jet has a 3 HP motor which has power to spare to handle the 10 inch spiral cutter head. Some machines with lower powered motors are known to lack sufficient power to handle the spiral cutter heads, unless only fine cuts are made. Fine Woodworking Magazine have a Pod Cast on their web site where this issue was discussed at length.

As far as cut quality is concerned..... The surface finish between the straight blade cutter head and the spiral cutter head is like chalk and cheese. The spiral cutter head certainly gives a much better surface finish. However, the surface finish when you are trying to plane figured wood will still have some tearout. The tearout on figured wood is not as bad as with the straight blade cutters, but lots of sanding, or other hand tools finishing steps, are required to eliminate the remaining tearout. (For some photos of this problem, have a look at this post I put up last week; https://www.woodworkforums.com/f11/advice-deal-figured-wood-197079.)

My recommendation - go for it - it's an upgrade that is definitely worth the cost and effort.

Hope that info helps,

RoyG

If your machine is fairly new then it *may* be worth while removing the bearings from your old had and transferring them to the new one. All you need is a bearing puller and they can be had from Supercheap for about $25. However this assumes that the shafts are the same size which may not be the case.

You may be better off just buying new bearings which should be about $20 - $30 each from your local bearing place. All you need to make sure is that the inner is the shaft size and the outer is the original bearing size and the width is the same as the original. The head description often specifies which bearing to buy so all you need to do is take that specification into your local bearing place.

John

Hi Yanis, my machine is 30+ years old but still in very good working order. It seems from what both you and RoyG have said the bearings probably should or will need to be replaced in any case.

Hi RoyG, I am curious about your comment, about there not really being much difference in the sound volume, rather the pitch changes. From what I have read elsewhere, one of the big selling points of the spiral heads is quieter operation. I guess this is why it is worth using this forum to learn more.

The HC 260-M, in its standard form, has only two cutting blades and I believe the motor is 2.2HP, so maybe not such a good candidate for a spiral head given RoyG comment about lack of power on machines fitted with motors of less that 3HP.

More research required...

thanks

Originally Posted by Ari2

Hi RoyG, I am curious about your comment, about there not really being much difference in the sound volume, rather the pitch changes. From what I have read elsewhere, one of the big selling points of the spiral heads is quieter operation. I guess this is why it is worth using this forum to learn more.

The HC 260-M, in its standard form, has only two cutting blades and I believe the motor is 2.2HP, so maybe not such a good candidate for a spiral head given RoyG comment about lack of power on machines fitted with motors of less that 3HP.

More research required...

thanks

I have seen people at trade shows etc take sound level measurements of machines before and after installing the shellix cutter heads, and they usually demonstrate a reduction in measured sound levels. However, I'm not saying that their sound measurement tests are dodgy, but in one trade demonstration that I watched, I noticed that the depth of cut for the straight cutter head machine was about 2mm, whilst on the spiral cutter head test, the demonstrator had a depth of cut of about 1mm, and the result - of course the spiral cutter head registered a lower noise level.

Having listened to both my own machine before and after having the spiral cutter head installed, and having listened to a friend's Hafco Thicknesser before and after, I don't reckon that the average set of human ears can notice the difference - or maybe younger ears than mine can tell the difference.

As far as a machine having sufficient power to run the spiral cutters ----- where the lack of power (if any exists) will be noticed, will be during thicknessing operations. If your machine has a variable feed speed on the thicknesser, you'll probably just reduce the feed speed slightly to compensate. A woodworking club that I used to be a member of had a thicknesser that was underpowered (on some woods) after a Shelix cutter head was installed. They fixed that problem by changing the pulley driving the feed rollers to reduce the non-variable feed speed by about 10%. After that mod, the machine worked great, and nobody complained that the feed speed had slowed down.

Ask your proposed supplier of the Shelix cutter head. If it's R.D.G. International Agencies from Howard in Qld, then they're pretty good people to deal with, and I'm sure that you'll get straight answers if you ask.


Hope that helps,

RoyG

Has anyone successfully done this particular mod ? The reason I ask is because I'm trying to do the same to my EB HC260. A CTS head instead of Shelix and I'm having trouble removing the pulley wheel at the end of the shaft. It looks to be press-fitted on or it may have a left hand thread. The CTS cutter looks like it's designed for a pulley wheel with a key in it and it's secured by a nut at the end. I've attached a couple of pics to illustrate what I'm talking about. Any help will be much appreciated.


20160730_134753.jpg20160730_134757.jpg20160730_134708.jpg

Can you post a picture looking end on at the pulley and also of the Shelix that the pulley fits to.
The end of the Shelix in the picture is RH thread.

20160730_163308.jpg

20160730_163325.jpg


Here you go. And its a CTS not Shelix. I think they are a Chinese or Taiwanese copy of Shelix.

Yep, the CTS cutter looks like the pulley wheel is located with a "key" and secured with a normal nut. The cutter head on my EB does not have this.

Centre of the pulley is not clear in the picture, but has it a got a hex recess for a hex key?

There's no hex bolt or head in the centre of the pulley that I can see.

31-07-2016 7-56-58 AM.jpg


Judging by this illustration I found online, it appears that the pulley is indeed threaded.....

I'd suggest that you get back to the supplier of the CTS Cutter Head. Assuming you bought your CTS cutter head in Australia, then you'll get pretty good service from the Australian importer --- Wizard Products (a.k.a. Woodcraft Supplies). They may have inadvertently sold you a cutter head for a slightly different variant of Beckum machine. Or, you may have a Beckum model variant that they haven't seen before.

Either way, I'd recommend that you talk to your CTS supplier before you start making a new pulley (and possibly new bearing blocks) to suit the new cutter head, or before you start modifying the new cutter head to suit your machine.

Regards,

RoyG

Thanks Roy. Yep, I bought the cutter from the Aussie supplier and I've contacted Robert already. But even if I get the right cutter, I'm still faced with the same problem of removing the pulley wheel. The pulley will need to be re-used on the new cutter plus I still have to remove it in order to re-use the bearing and bearing housing.

20160731_094835.jpg20160731_094845.jpg



SUCCESS !!!


Now I just need the right cutter or a pulley wheel for the new cutter head. Anyone know a good pulley supplier in Brisbane ?