Shelix head a waste of time?

[Dengue]

hi all, I bought a Dewalt DW735-XE thicknesser with a view to eventually fitting a Shelix spiral cutter head for reduced noise and superior quality of cut, esp with cranky grains.

At one of the stands at the recent Melbourne Timber and Working with Wood Show, the sellers of the Shelix head told me that their biggest seller was for this particular thicknesser. They had a demo thicknesser which showed just how quiet the Shelix head was. Mind you, the thicknesser was very quiet too, with a big induction motor.
Big shock when I fired up the Dewalt and the noise level was 95 dB unloaded. A real screamer

Checked the manual, sure enough, it is rated at 95dB. Put a piece of hardwood through it, and the sound level only went up to 96dB. For a comparison, the nearby 2HP dust collector was only putting out 85 dB measured from 2.5 metres away.

Wondering why such a little machine makes such a loud sound - the universal motor, the three blades? Any suggestions please?

Having a re-think about getting a Shelix head for this unit - I doubt it will lower the overall noise, unless the three blades are the main culprit.

Does anyone have any experience with the Shelix spiral cutter on this Dewalt thicknesser?

[Jim Carroll]

The main difference between any standard blade thicknesser / jointer and shelix/ helix is the amount of air movement.

The standard blades are full width and move a lot of air so generate noise.

The shelix have a wide band of small cutters so reducing the air movement and so reducing the noise.

When you couple a dust extractor up to standard blades it increases the air moved over the blades and increases the noise.

When used with shelix cutters it will increase the noise but only marginally compared to the standard blades.

[Dengue]

Found an excellent review by SuperBunny on this forum here, and read through 30 feedback comments on the Amazon site here

It does not appear that there is a $600 - $800 worth of improvement in noise reduction (a huge factor for me), or in the quality of cut.

One thing about the Dewalt 735 appears to be the ease of changing blades, and the availability of TCT blades

[Jim Carroll]

I would find it hard not to believe that there is not an improvement in cut from these cutter as I have seen and used the shelix cutters and it give a far superior cut to standard style blades.

The other advantage is you also start sanding at a higher grit as the finish of the blades is so much better.

THe blades you looked at the melbourne show are set up properly where they give a skewed cut there is others available that when you look at the cutters they may spiral around the holder but the cutter is still square to the table, which is not a true shelix cut.

They work ok but no way near as good as the shelix style.

[Superbunny]

I would find it hard not to believe that there is not an improvement in cut from these cutter as I have seen and used the shelix cutters and it give a far superior cut to standard style blades.

The other advantage is you also start sanding at a higher grit as the finish of the blades is so much better.

THe blades you looked at the melbourne show are set up properly where they give a skewed cut there is others available that when you look at the cutters they may spiral around the holder but the cutter is still square to the table, which is not a true shelix cut.

They work ok but no way near as good as the shelix style.

I stand by my posts and I did post pictures of both, I did buy the real Shelix. Most thicknesses I have seen use 2 blades but the Dewalt uses 3 and that makes a difference to how it performs.

SB