Thicknesser

[safari]

I have the carbatec CT330 which I am very happy with, however, If you are worried by noise I am not sure that this machine is much quieter than a straight blade machine. You really need to go to a real helical head to bring the noise down.

[fubar]

I had the carbatec15" straight blades thought it was the bees knees compared to my 15" triton had it for 2 months then had the misfortune to run a Laguna 16" helical Oh my god!!! the difference in finish and the quietness price was very ouchy but haven't regretted it. what I'm trying to say is buy the straight then retrofit the helical not the spiral.

[elanjacobs]

When professional woodworkers talk about their carbide heads they typically talk of rotating the cutters to a fresh edge about once a year.

Once a year?? Maybe if they're running nothing but clear pine and the occasional piece of Vic Ash. Not a chance if you're using some of the tougher Aussie hardwoods.
3 months between rotations is about average for the helical heads at work (24" thicknesser and 16" buzzer), I also only turn every second row to double the life of a set of tips.

[Yanis]

Once a year?? Maybe if they're running nothing but clear pine and the occasional piece of Vic Ash. Not a chance if you're using some of the tougher Aussie hardwoods.
3 months between rotations is about average for the helical heads at work (24" thicknesser and 16" buzzer), I also only turn every second row to double the life of a set of tips.

I defer to your greater knowledge. And yes, our Australian hard woods can be quite aggressive. Nice tip about the rotation too.

[sje-tools]

The H&F and the Carbatec both use the exact same spiral head with the exact same 26 HSS cutters. SJE Tools sells a complete set of tungsten inserts for $99 dollars. The inserts have two cutting edges so when they wear or are damaged they can be rotated to the second edge, plus if you only use the middle six inches or so of the machine you can swap the inner and outer cutters to even out the wear. The 0.5mm stated depth of cut is incorrect, it will do up to a 3.2mm cut depending on the width and hardness of the timber. These two machines are very close together in their performance, the CT is about ten kilos heavier though which is why I chose it; more mass equals less vibration. SJE Tools is a forum member and has the H&F machine, he has at least one u-tube video showing it in use with the inserts he sells. As well as myself, Evanism also owns the CT. Lastly, the previous edition of Australian Woodworking Review did a shootout of both of those machines plus the DeWalt machine Crowie owns, overall the DeWalt gave the best finish but the reviewer preferred the CT in the end.

Indeed, I am a member although one who has very little time to post as late! (let alone create the bloody animated Gif I need to do for the ad!)

Anyway, In terms of finish the carbide type will also govern that - HSS is typically a very fine finish and does indeed provide a finish which is finer than many carbides, however you can get fine carbide (ahem such as the K01 I use for all my inserts) which provide a finish as good/better than HSS.

Along with the quieter operation the other big plus for the spiral/helical heads is the chip/dust collection - wide blades create large chips/curls which clog extractors very quickly.

Also I really cannot see any reason why you would want be taking off over 1mm+ at the most - I very rarely go over 0.5mm - but anyway both the CTX330S & T13S will do 3mm passes.

I've done a bit of a comparison between the standard thicknessers and the spiral heads and attached it below. I couldn't get all of the information from the company websites. Importantly, as stated, the spiral/helical are quieter machines and that is what I need.

Secondly, the cutter knifes for the Carbatec and Hafco are stated at 26 inserts. The replacement knifes in either HSS or Tungsten only come in packs of 10 and are roughly $65 and $105, respectively. Do you change only damaged knives or do you need to change all 26 in one go which would mean buying 3 packs?

Finally for now, the Carbatec is sold as a segmented spiral 2 head while the Hafco is sold as a Helical cutter head. I noticed in one of the posts that the Helical is supposed to be the better of the two. Is the Hafco a true helical and is it easier to change knives with this head.

As Chief Tiff said - AU$99 - full set.

Both the Carbatec and Hafco Spiral head thicknesser use exactly the same head - both are spiral aka segmented head.

The T13S has done everything I've ever needed of it - however it's not been doing much just lately (once I finally move out of my garage and into my shed it will do more!!!)

[elanjacobs]

I defer to your greater knowledge. And yes, our Australian hard woods can be quite aggressive. Nice tip about the rotation too.

Had a look at my sharpening records today and it looks like it's closer to 6 months between rotations on average, not 3.

Also I really cannot see any reason why you would want be taking off over 1mm+ at the most - I very rarely go over 0.5mm

You want to take off as much as possible in a pass so that you're not wasting time and unnecessarily wearing the blades (and the table and the belts and every other moving part). I've done the math on it and a 2mm cut has double the knife engagement (length of the arc through the timber that the knives take) of a 0.5mm cut - 4 times the cut depth but only 2 times the wear and in 1/4 of the time. You can draw your own conclusions.
If your machine can happily take a 2mm pass and leave an acceptable finish, there is absolutely no reason to do it in multiple smaller passes. Machines are built to be able to handle a certain load, USE IT! You're not going to break anything by making it use its designed capacity and you won't prolong its life by wrapping it in cotton wool.

As an aside, the inserts from sje-tools are very good; coming up to 5 months (and they've been VERY busy) and showing no signs of needing a rotation.

[sje-tools]

Had a look at my sharpening records today and it looks like it's closer to 6 months between rotations on average, not 3.

You want to take off as much as possible in a pass so that you're not wasting time and unnecessarily wearing the blades (and the table and the belts and every other moving part). I've done the math on it and a 2mm cut has double the knife engagement (length of the arc through the timber that the knives take) of a 0.5mm cut - 4 times the cut depth but only 2 times the wear and in 1/4 of the time. You can draw your own conclusions.
If your machine can happily take a 2mm pass and leave an acceptable finish, there is absolutely no reason to do it in multiple smaller passes. Machines are built to be able to handle a certain load, USE IT! You're not going to break anything by making it use its designed capacity and you won't prolong its life by wrapping it in cotton wool.

As an aside, the inserts from sje-tools are very good; coming up to 5 months (and they've been VERY busy) and showing no signs of needing a rotation.

Glad they are living up to expectations - you might even get 7 or 8 months before rotation!

You know thinking about it when ever I am running pine and the like through the thicknesser I do often take 2mm or 2.5mm passes - with straight grain. Essentially otherwise when I am working with our timbers for guitars they are well figured and going over 0.5mm pass you are very prone to tear out - so I suppose that's just my automatic safety limits kicking in stopping me from wrecking an expensive piece of timber!!

[elanjacobs]

Glad they are living up to expectations - you might even get 7 or 8 months before rotation!

8 months per rotation doing every second row makes it over 5 years out of a set - and that's in an industrial setting. I think you might have made them a bit too good

[Canoath]

I bought the Ryobi RAP1500G a couple of days ago. The last time I researched thicknessers I concluded a helical head is what I needed but I couldn't justify the up front price of what I wanted and I was determined to stay away from straight blade machines regardless of price. So I decided to continue to make do with hand planes and the table saw, until Wednesday just gone. I had four sleeper size pieces of cooba to rip into planks and hand planing was doing my head in. In desperation the Ryobi was the only thicknesser in town so I bought it, plugged it in and planed away.

First impressions, holy cow it's loud. I used it on the concrete floor at first then put it on a plastic trolley today which seemed louder. Small pieces are tolerable but 2m x 190mm x 25mm planks require hearing protection. There's no way I'd try and take 3mm at a time as the specs state. Each quarter of a turn of the height adjustment equals 0.4mm change in depth and I used adjustments between 0.4 - 0.8mm. Anything over that required a second or third pass at the same setting before the blades barely touched the wood. At 1.2mm depths and a wide board it just didn't sound healthy for the machine. It coped, and didn't trip out but half a turn at 0.8mm is fine by me. I don't mind sending the piece through multiple times to get the right thickness or to simply flatten and remove saw marks.

The chip shroud and 50mm dust collector port was too small without a vacuum connected. For those boards mentioned the ejection port would clog after 1m of the board went through. Snipe was averted if the boards were fed at a slight downward angle and angled up just before the board exits. My 2m boards needed supporting by hand throughout each pass except for when it was half way through. I wouldn't rely on the tables and rollers alone for weighty or long boards.

Regarding the finish. The planks had some tear out, minimal planer blade marks and an occasional line left. All boards were 25mm rough sawn then planed to approx 21mm to flatten. Each edge of the 12 boards matched the thickness of their opposite sides and the measuring guide is adequate, not super accurate due to parallax error and I rarely looked at it. Just occasionally sighting it to make sure I was above 20mm because the final thickness we're aiming for is 19mm which will be done at a later date and it's expected that scraping and/or sanding will be a must.

Overall I'm pretty happy with it. It's saved a bunch of hand planing and electric hand planing though not replaced them entirely. More importantly it's accurately dimensioned timber that I wouldn't have had the patience or skill to do entirely by hand. I'll throw all this into the review section because there's really nothing on this thicknesser yet and there's surely a bunch of others looking at it as a prospective buy versus the other cheaper straight blade thicknessers. FWIW, the $464 Jet is cheaper but looks a dead ringer for the previous Ryobi, the AP13 and both have a 2000w/2.5hp motor whereas mine is 1500w/2.0hp.

[P.W.H.]

In my experience Jet is a cut or two above other machines out of China, even if they have the same or a very similar look. Not as good as a Laguna or a Felter
for sure, but well made.

For example, when I went bandsaw shopping a few years ago I went around all the machinery sellers in Auckland and looked at brands like Macma, Trupro, this and
that in various stores. One of those machines practically jumped off the pallet it was standing one when they plugged it in and turned it on for me. Others you'd
turn off and they'd grind to a whining squealing halt. My Jet at least doesn't shake (even if you might not quite be able to stand a coin on edge on the table during
operation, I haven't tried that). It also has some run ... the blade stops a minute or two after I turn the motor off. Nothing like the Italian machine I once used that was
still running 5 minutes after I had turned it off with no shake or vibration at all: I just about hurt myself because I wasn't expecting THAT. But Jet quality is the
next tier down from that, in my opinion.

If I could get a 15" or 16" Jet thicknesser here in NZ, I'd be in like Flynn. Sadly, Carbatec only bring in the baby ones.

[curto67]

Hi my father has the Hafco T13s Thicknesser
from Hare and Forbes and it is crap, he is getting snipe on every board and lines down every board. He has tried to modify the base with a melamine board that is about a metre long to try and eliminate snipe and still has had no luck, so I would not recommend this machine, if you know of any other way to fix or know of any other machine that doesn't do this please let me know, thanks Damian

[ian]

Hi damian

welcome to the forums

Hi my father has the Hafco T13s Thicknesser
from Hare and Forbes and it is crap, he is getting snipe on every board and lines down every board. He has tried to modify the base with a melamine board that is about a metre long to try and eliminate snipe and still has had no luck, so I would not recommend this machine, if you know of any other way to fix or know of any other machine that doesn't do this please let me know, thanks Damian

snipe is caused by the feed rollers which are usually mounted beside the cutter head. The easiest way to deal with it is to mill your boards 4 or 5 inches longer than required and to cut the snipe off once the board is the correct thickness.

another technique is to pass boards through the thicky end to end so that the feed rollers are always on wood

Some thicknessers can be adjusted to minimize snipe. Hang around and I'm sure someone will provide some hints



lines down every board usually indicates that one or more of the knives are chipped.
If you were planing recovered timber and hit a nail or milling painted timber your knives though apparently new may be stuffed.

What you can try is moving one knife to the right, and the other to the left. Depending on the damage this sometimes allows an undamaged part of one knife to compensate for the chip in the other.

[sje-tools]

Snipe any "lunchbox" thicknesser will exist if the in and outfeed tables aren't level and if the wood isn't supported again on the in and outfeed. If you are thicknessing any pieces longer than the combined length of the infeed and width of the thicknesser it will need support.

Lines on the T13S could be several things - the most obvious and easiest to resolve is chipped inserts - next - make sure the inserts are seated correctly into the head so making them perfectly square (clear all the dust and crap off the head when adjusting other wise you run the risk of it getting behind or beneath the inserts and causing further problem in getting things squared up) next - if the inserts have been change in the life of the machine check the inserts are the correct ones for the head (the number of folks who buy inserts on a "I think they are the correct" or "0.3mm won't make a difference" is pretty surprising).

As with anything if you take the time to correctly prepare & set up the machine the resulting performance will be far better. .. .

Cheers

Steve

[safari]

On my Carbatec spiral I managed to eliminate snipe by putting in a lot of time setting the tables exactly level. much trial and effort but finally got there.

[derekcohen]

I have a Hammer A3-31 combo with helix/carbide head, which is the ducks nuts. No snipe or tear out. However, before this I had a Delta lunchbox thicknesser, and worked out a method to eliminate snipe. The essential element is that the beds must be coplanar and must remain so (no dipping when a long board is passed through the machine).



This involved adding a support under each bed ..






Regards from Perth

Derek