Thread: spiral cutterhead conversions

Hi Darren...my neighbor down the road is the Australian importer for these heads, His Name is Robert Gregory and can be contacted on 07 4129 4644 or 0418 184 048.
I was down there on Friday and he was showing me the new heads for the 300mm Jet, which is the machine I have...could not believe the quietness and finish...phenomenal.

ravna - would that be the JPT-310 by any chance?

I've looked into a helical head for my (3-phase) JPT-310, but at the time Robert didn't have a standard Shellix head for this machine so it would have been really pricey.

JET now sell a JPT-310HH with the helical head as standard, so I also looked into buying just the cutterhead from JET to upgrade my machine. However, I'm not sure if the JET version is a true helical head (like the Shellix) or a pseudo-helical head (like Carbatec sell). By this, I mean something that has individual 4-sided cutters arranged in helical lines, BUT with the actual cutting edges square to the direction of timber feed. I doubt this would give the same cut quality as the Shellix, nor would it be as quiet.

Darren - give Stuart a call at Sturt and go try their new 20" Powermatic helical head thicknesser. Its a huge improvement on a standard cutterhead, but still gives tearout on some timbers........and Sturt don't have a drum sander like you do !

Another place to look.

Byrd Shelix Spiral Jointer Planer Heads Helical Cutterheads

Originally Posted by Shutterbug

Another place to look.

Byrd Shelix Spiral Jointer Planer Heads Helical Cutterheads

Robert Gregory is the Australian distributor for Byrd - he's also great to deal with.

We're (I say we, but it's really me who's doing it) currently in the process of doing conversions at work on a SCM F410 jointer - just waiting on new bearings to be pressed on - and we are having a head for our SCM S63 thicknesser made.

I've used a thicknesser with the helix head at Holmesglen and it's worth every penny; massive reduction in noise and surface finish is immaculate.

As for ease of conversion it depends on the machine. Our thicknesser is about 60 years old and is dead easy to pull apart aside from needing 4 people to lift the cover off - they don't make 'em like they used to - but the buzzer is 16 years old and is a royal PITA.

The buzzer head cost just under $2k and the thicknesser about $4700 and with the dollar as it is, now's the time to buy.

Where abouts are you? I'm happy to give you a hand with the conversion if you like (and if I can get to you). I'd highly recommend having another pair of hands anyway as the heads are heavier than they look; our 16" buzzer head weighs 38kg so I'd bet on 50kg+ for a 24"

Cheers,
Elan

Originally Posted by Mr Brush

ravna - would that be the JPT-310 by any chance?

Yes Mr Brush...one and the same, Robert tells me he keeps stock of all the common heads...and would assume for the JPT-310, as that is what he uses.

He was saying the Chinese have a 'Copy' of the Shelix but is not exactly the same either physically or in performance. From memory, I think he may have mentioned that the Chinese head is what is available on some new machines.

Originally Posted by ravna

Yes Mr Brush...one and the same, Robert tells me he keeps stock of all the common heads...and would assume for the JPT-310, as that is what he uses.

He was saying the Chinese have a 'Copy' of the Shelix but is not exactly the same either physically or in performance. From memory, I think he may have mentioned that the Chinese head is what is available on some new machines.

The copy head has tips arranged in a spiral pattern but they are square to the cut as opposed to set at an angle which would produce a true helical edge

Spiral: http://image.made-in-china.com/2f0j0...-803-1060-.jpg

Shelix: http://www.nas.com/~harmonic/NewShop/rc-63%20shelix.jpg

The spiral has the same benefits as the helix in that is uses multiple small knives to lower the noise and reduce motor load but the helix will give a true 'slicing' action which will produce a better finish on difficult grain and reduces noice even further

Hi Darren,
I fitted a byrd shelix cutterhead to my standard generic 15" thicky, little bit of work but no real drama, pushing off/replacing the bearings is about the only tricky bit although your individual machines might have there own extra tricky bits, in use, lots quieter, no setting of blades, just rotate or replace when necessary, lot better on tearout susceptable timber, being carbide tips last a lot longer but will shatter/break/chip if they hit something they don't like, lots of positives with the only minor downfall is an ever so slight curve/radius left by each cutter in the surface of the wood, easily removed with handplane, hand or machine sanding

Pete

Hi Pete, have you had to rotate any of your cutters yet. I worked out that a new set of cutters for my 600mm leda would be over $1000 so they would want to last a very long time.

ravna/elanjacobs - I think there is still some patent issue that stops other manufacturers directly copying the Shelix, hence the "spiral" cutterheads offered by Carbatec et al which don't provide a shearing cut. Powermatic DO have the same cutter arrangement as the Shelix, so maybe they pay a license fee or possibly just fit OEM Shelix heads to their machines?

I've never actually seen JET's helical head (as opposed to the Shelix fitted to a JET machine); does anyone know if the JET version is a true helical cutter (i.e. shearing cuts), or is ti more like the Carbatec interpretation?

I remember another thread on this subject a while ago; someone reckoned he got a full year out of a set of cutters (i.e. all four edges), but that was in a full-time production environment. You'd probably use up a couple of extra cutters just replacing ones that got badly dinged. The Powermatic machine at Sturt gets fairly heavy use, and I think they are planning on rotating the cutters at the beginning of each term, thereby giving a full year per set.

The Jet helical head is just like the festool power planer blades, curved, full length, slightly flexible blades. I have no idea how they perform, but the blades must be OK if they are in a Jet machine.

First of all, fitted the new head in our buzzer today and it's unreal it's so quiet when running that you don't need ear plugs and can comfortably talk over it without shouting. One interesting thing I did notice is that it now needs slightly MORE effort to pass timber over it but I'm going to put that down to the fact that there are now 8 wings rather than 4. But harder or not, the finish is immaculate; zero tearout with a 350 wide board of American Oak taking a 3 mm cut and a quick touch with 180 grit on the ROS and it's ready for polishing. I'm going to search the factory for the curliest grain I can find and see how it goes. Can't wait for our thicknesser head to arrive.

Another way to extend cutter life is to only rotate every second row each time, so you'll still have 4 sharp rows between 4 blunt rows, this would effectively give you 8 'sharpens' per set. The cutters can also be sharpened by rubbing the flat top side on a diamond plate but this requires lots of Zen.

Originally Posted by Darren Oates

Hi Pete, have you had to rotate any of your cutters yet. I worked out that a new set of cutters for my 600mm leda would be over $1000 so they would want to last a very long time.

I bought my shelix at the Bris wood show..mmmm must be 3 years ago now, at that time I was thicknessing some old dry hard Ironbark 100mm wide boards, had about 2000lm to do, normal blades would do about 100lm (if lucky) before they started to complain, I did the remaining metres (after shelix implant) without regard for grain direction without a tearout problem (apart from right at a knot or similliar grain direction change) I did rotate at least once during that 2000lm, I did so more out of curiousity/test to see if I could determine an improvement in finish or whether the blades were still good, I am still on my first set of cutters, (apart from the odd replaced one) but on the last rotate before replace,

I reckon there is still a sharper face on the cutters a rotate (or 2) back than the current set although I still get a good finish on surfaced timber, softer wooly shyte wood furrs up a bit specially if I get grain direction wrong but nothing that a machine sander can't fix.

I reckon that if you had machine sander to process further after thicknessing and only thicknessed med to high density timbers for a couple of hours a day it will be a few years before you even need to rotate.

I have (like Elan below says) wondered about lapping the top face of each cutter to get a bit more out of, could be a job when the the Zen moment strikes and no real work


Pete