Thread: retro-fitting sprial head to Woodfast WPT-310 combo thicknesser

I recall one member on this forum who has done this.

segmented cutting heads

I have done it on both the planer and thicknesser at work. It was a pretty straight-forward task, just needed extra hands at various stages for the heavy lifting.

You will need to (well... not need, but definitely should) get new bearings and have them professionally pressed on. I have been told that pulling bearings off by the outer race can stuff them as they're not designed to be stressed in that direction.

I could probably come over on a Sunday if you'd like a hand with the swap.

If you can stretch the budget a bit further, get a helical head instead of a spiral. The terms are often used interchangeably, but they're very different. Spirals are basically just straight knives that are cut into smaller bits; you get the noise reduction, but that's all. Helical heads have the inserts set on an angle so you get a shearing cut, much better finish for curly grain and you can even run endgrain through it (it kills the inserts very quickly, but there's no tearout)

Hi Elan,
I'm yet to buy the planer head, but when I do, it's good to know someone has done it before! Will have to source the bearings as well ( agree, makes sense to replace those while i'm at it ).

Will have to first double check the finances and make sure I can afford it - they sure haven't come down in price much!

Many thanks for the offer though.....If I get it, and run into trouble I may just come back to take you up on that offer!

Good luck !

Not sure about thicknesser heads, but when I did my little 6" jointer, the bearings were only a light press fit.

I ended up making a jigger on my lathe by boring a piece of pine to the diameter of the shaft, turning to a cylinder, then turning the "rim" down to match the dimension of the inner ring on the bearing. Took me about 10 minutes.

Then tapped on with a hammer.

Could be the industrial stuff needs the press. They certainly didn't come off easily

I put a Shelix head on my Jet router and got them to include new bearings for me.

I was expecting something to go wrong or be a challenge so I bought a gear puller.
It actually went smoothly. The bearings tapped on and off using a block of wood and a short piece of PVC about the same size as the bearings.

The oil drain plug in the gearbox didn't want to come up but I drained the oil through the fill hole. Everything lined up without much drama. A couple of blocks of wood under the cutter helped support it when it dropped off.

An extra hand would have been handy but it wasn't too bad to do on my own.

I stood well back when I turned on the power but it ran smoothly and no bits of metal came flying out.

Really impressed with the job it does and my dust collector doesn't black up with long shavings anymore.

I'm saving up to replace the cutter in my 8" jointer.

Originally Posted by Scally

I put a Shelix head on my Jet router...

Router

Definitely go for a helical head rather than the "spiral cutter" configuration (as used on several Carbatec machines). If I remember rightly, the guy here who imports the Shelix head also offers a substantially cheaper Chinese made version with the same cutter configuration? I looked at doing this for my JET JPT310 (3-phase) a while ago, but cost got in the way.

I know you only have to do the table alignment once with a helical cutterhead, but with conventional cutterheads you are essentially aligning the knives to the outfeed table (i.e. referenced to a straightedge on the outfeed table). Once a helical head is fitted to there is no such adjustment, so instead you would have to align both tables to the cutterhead. Remembering how long it took me to get the tables coplanar on my JPT310, aligning tables to cutterhead could be a big (though one off) job?