Thread: Ledacraft PT-129

I was actually curious about this machine myself, and went to see it in person. I did not see it running, but did see it unboxed. It certainly did look like a decent machine, I will give you that.

Because I have neighbours pretty close by, one of the concerns I had on any thicknesser was noise, so for me, the option was to purchase the machine with the spiral cutterblock, and this would make the price near enough to $3900.

This is still a very good price for a 12" machine - in fact, I was unable in my searching to find a better price for similar specification machine... and ultimately, that was why I decided to give it a miss - because it was a fair bit cheaper than the "next nearest" I started getting the gut feeling that it might be "too good to be true". Maybe I'm wrong on that, I don't have anything concrete to back that up with other than my own gut feeling.

My personal opinion was that I couldn't find enough reviews and information online from other satisfied customers, this combined with a lack of discussion on these and other forums of the brand in general gave me some doubt.

A deal on the Jet JPT-310HH at $4600 (yes, $700 more), but considering the brand and their reputation, and a 3 year warranty, was enough to convince me to "buy once, cry once".

Having taken delivery of the Jet unit, I am glad I made the change - there is a level of finish about the machine that is just a wee bit nicer than the Leda unit. The inclusion of a height gauge (0.1mm accurate) on the thicknesser is a very minor thing in the scheme of things - but it's a nice touch, and saved the cost of a Wixey DRO (another cost that should be added to the Leda unit for "apples to apples" comparison).

Leda is relatively new to the market.

Their range indicates that they're targeting commercial/industrial users and, simply based on that, I think that warrants a decent level of confidence in their products. I would certainly be looking at them over Carbatec and the other generic re-badges.

Where I volunteer, at the local Day Centre in a Men's Shed, we have one that is PT129S, fitted with the spiral segmented head, and it's quiet enough that a conversation can be held whilst the machine is running, the dust extractor is a lot noisier.
Swapping from jointer to thicknesser is very simple, remove the fence arrangement, the blade cover must first be moved out to expose the blades, a lever moved, at each end to disconnect the catch to prevent the beds from lifting, and lift each side up, and flip the chip collector over, and you're ready for thicknessing.
The only bug bear that I can think of, is that bed has to be moved down to around 150 mm to allow the chip collector to be flipped over. A wheel with a handle is used for movement up and down of the thicknesser bed. I feel a nut type arrangement should be fitted in the centre of the handle to allow a reversible drill with a socket to be used to raise/lower the bed quickly. Some days our machine is converted 3-4 times a day, as we have several volunteers authorized to use it.
Kryn
The other bug bear is that the steel drive roller is only machined with a fine parallel knurl, and gets blocked up quickly with gum resin, causing a non feeding situation.

Thanks for the replies. much appreciated.

I found this Youtube video last night which appears to be of the same machine:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I0kbxjwrB30

Hi Rev,
That is exactly the same machine. You have an emergency stop and a reset button on the right hand end, have found that if the machine won't work, the reset button somehow has been tripped, is the usual case, or some one has pushed one of the two emergency stop switches.
Regards
Kryn