Thread: TOWA 254mm Circular Saw - Model #W-90

Hi, Crowie!

there are a lot of Japanese firms with the name of TOWA. It's almost like the generic "ACME" brand name as used in Warner Bros cartoons. But a good bet could be Towa Electric Industries Co. from Nagoja, which started out in 1947, as a repair and rewinding shop for electric machines. That's about the same way that Makita started out with in 1954. Ryobi started off in 1943, with plastic and alloy die cast products (door openers, printing equipment), but not yet with power tools. Towa joined the Ryobi Group in 1971, when its name was changed into Ryobi Sales Co. This would coincide with the first Ryobi power tools , but Towa has probably been Ryobi's source for electric motors and such in an earlier stage than that. The Towa brand seems to have been revived in Austriala by Walker, recently, and the products are imported there by Electraserv.

You mentioned that you owned this machine for some 20 years or more. In Japan, 100 Volts were the lighting grid voltage standard in those days. Since homeland and export models of machines often use the same electric motor housing designs, i doubt that the 4000 Watts drive would have single phase. Even on 240 Volts (AU and NZ export model) the wiring would be hard pressed. So it's probably three phase, which for the Japanese homeland version would have been 3x 200 Volts. 4000 Watts input is approx 2200 Watts output, or some 3 - 3.5 hp. For such a power class, a 254mm blade is very small. The type name is W-90, would the saw depth be 90 mms? In that case the machine is probably belt-driven, with the blade possibly spinning a bit faster then the motor itself. Sounds like a machine for precision cuts with minimal loss, like a plate or panel saw or something.

Towa machines may have been imported to the EU at some point of time, but this brand is virtually unknown over here. So there is very little information to be had from this part of the world. Do you have a picture of it? And what precisely is the info that you were looking for?

greetings

gerhard

Crowie

I have Ryobi/Towa electric planers from the early eighties and for a while both names appeared on the tools. More latterly the Towa connection was dropped.

4000watts sounds odd to me. As gerhard has mentioned, it is too big for common single phase power. The vast majority of hand-held power tools are designed to run off a maximum of 15amps, which in practice limits the machine to 2400watts. This equates to roughly 3.25HP.

I expect that the specification plate is difficult to read on a machine that age, but If you have this machine on single phase power it would probably be a maximum of 2400watts.

Different if it is 3phase, but not many hand tools are 3phase.

Can you take a picture and post it here?

Regards
Paul

Thanks Gerhard & Paul,
I'll organize a few photos over the next day or two.
Cheers, crowie

G'Day Again Gerhard & Paul,
I'll organized the photos and I made a big mistake = 4000RPM not 4000Watts.
I hope the photos help with some info on the saw, thank you.
Cheers, crowie

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I have a Towa Electric Planer. I bought it in 1972 with money from the company I started my apprenticeship with went belly up.
It is such a good machine! It has a 3" wide 2 blade cutter block and will quite happily get into what ever you want to reduce with it. What I really like about it is that when you use it it feels like a common hand plane in your grasp with the positioning of the 2 handles. (The current range of any brand plane don't have that feel. Thinking about it I think they are designed to be comfortably operated single handed)
The only inherent draw back it that the rear plastic handle wil crack. Mine did early in the piece so I folded up a small piece of sheet metal and its been that way for a loooog time. It has 2 belts that drive the cutter block and I have been told that replacements are like rocking horse sh** to find. As it happens a brother-in-law gave me his father's (think BIL was afraid to use it) so now I have one for the workshop and one that goes out on site (which is rarely now)
Great planers though!!!
I have replaced the 4 bearings, 2 in the motor and 2 in the cutter block shaft, which were easy purchases over the counter (standard bearings). Oh and the leads a few times, the planer will even cut them too

The bottom photo is showing the repair to the handle.

Hi Crowie,
problem solved. I already thought i saw brush caps and when i saw 4000 rpm, i was pretty sure. The shape of the plate steel motor housing looks like it houses an induction motor, but Japanses power tools of the 70's often had such motor shapes for brush motors. Looks like a 950 Watts machine with regular spur gears. 4000 rpm is probably idle speed and if so, load speed will be somewhere around 3000-2500 rpm. The gear box is probably not all that compact, since the stabilising disc stacked on top of the saw blade, is also large. The saw depth is less than 90 mms, i guess it's somewhere around 50-55. A 950 Watts motor couldn't cope with more than that; Modern 85mms machines have motor wattages between 1600 and 2000.

The planer is a very nice machine. It looks like the vintage Makita and Hitachi planers, which were also very robust and well built. An electric planer using two belts is a very rare construction indeed. There was a firm in France once, that used to make spare belts on customer order, no matter what machine they were for. I once ordered a round (cross cut shape) belt for a vintage Mafell planer there, and a drive belt for a French Heurtier P6-24B movie projector. I haven't read or heard form them since, though, they may have closed shop. But there still must be firms that will make drive belts to specific order.

greetings

gerhard