Thread: Spindle Moulder a good idea or not?

Casadei is a good brand.

Spindle moulder is like a bigger router - does bigger stuff but you gotta watchout the kick back and powerfeed is almost a must.

I have a 40-50 years old Casadei FV110, has sliding table and the slide is still smooooth.

you still need to verify the condition of the machine. mine came out of local university - they had it since new.

The cost of the tooling can be a big issue.

I have a little dinkie Spindle Moulder (Jet-JWS33) and yes the cost of tooling brings tears to a bank manager, but if you can justify the cost of the machine + tooling to complete moulding operations quickly and safely, then yes a SM is worth while. I agree with the requirement of a power feeder on any industrial SM, you don't want your hands anywhere near the cutter head or your body close to a kick back.

Originally Posted by Chris Parks

The cost of the tooling can be a big issue.

You'll be looking at easily $2-300 just for a straight/rebate head, profile heads can be double that or more.

If you can't put it to regular use, I don't think it's a good investment.

I'm what most would call an advanced woodworker but not a professional. I have had the opportunity to use a spindle shaper with a power feed under very competent supervision. My problem was that I lacked the courage.

I don't know how you blokes buy coffee. Ours comes in a can 10mm diameter and 14.5mm tall. Why is this relevant you ask? That is roughly the size of the tooling that is spinning at around 8,000 RPM. As I said, I don't have the courage to use it.

I've got a moulder in my combo unit (Samco Jolly U260). I was lucky enough to be able to buy a bunch of tooling for cheap ($50/head) and so it's actually got some use. For taking out massive rebates (50 x 35mm along any length of timber) in a single pass at reasonable speed and with a good finish, you can't beat it. I feel that it is also quieter than a router, probably because the motor is a big induction unit instead of a noisy little universal/synchronous motor.

However, if you have to buy tooling new, a good quality combo head will set you back $300 - $700 (Felder pricing), plus changeout blades for different profiles at $40 - $70 each. Special fixed profile heads with tungsten tips can go into the $1000 range easily.

Going on from the coffee can comment, you have to remember that it also limits your maximum internal radius (if that's what you're doing). Unless you're lucky enough to have one with a 15000rpm setting, you also can't use router bits with it either, even with a collet.

For the home gamer, a router table is the way to fly unless you're going to start profiling metres and metres of boards on a regular basis. If money and space allowed, a good router table would probably be on my list if only so I could afford a range of occasional use profiles.

Also, depending on the unit, if it comes with the old school slotted head with semi balanced blades, you need to grow a very large pair indeed just to fire the thing up. Imagine 1/2 kg of HSS coming loose at 8000rpm.

The feed unit is a bonus, I'd kill for one (or the ability to put one on my machine). It also allows you to get out of harms way.

A good spindle moulder is a lovely thing to have in a production environment, but for the average home woodworker? It's a bit like keeping a high-end runway model mistress in a Sydney penthouse while on a 5 figure annual wage. Lovely to dream about...

I'd love to have one, been operating 'em most of my life, but at home? I have a router table. So far there's nothing I've needed to do that couldn't be replicated in a few more steps - and a lot more time - by using a TS and router.

Errmm... and, in all honesty, sanding blocks to clean up the result. But that's beside the point.

My first 'adult' job was setting up & operating a Koenig (? Been a long time.) 12-head job the size of a semi-trailer, excluding outfeed, in a joinery that had 3 of the beasts side by side.

By far my favourite configuration was feeding in 8"x2" meranti stock to generate swathes of 8x8mm window beads! So, so wasteful in material but geeze... it saved sooo much time!


FWIW, I'm not a fan of after-market power-feeds, especially the cheaper ones. They can cause more problems than they're worth, particularly when they start to creep out of alignment during use. [shudder]

The only machine I have ever operated that frightens me was a spindle moulder.

Interesting discussion. I have neither a router table nor a spindle moulder, but intend to get one or the other in the near future. I was personally leaning towards a small spindle moulder like the Harvey HW303E 3HP unit (rather domestic/pedestrian compared to that Casadei 3phase machine!). I was predominantly intending on using it for template/shaping work eg. flush trimming/cutting profiles for chair parts and other curved pieces, likely after rough cutting on the band-saw, as well as for larger tongue and groove or ship-lap boards. I figured that while the cut quality on router bits may not be as nice given the lower rpm, it would still handle these tasks as well - whereas the router table simply couldn't do the larger work. Also, I was thinking it couldn't be that hard to machine up a pulley to increase the rpm if needed. The cost of the actual machine is not much higher than if you were to go down the Incra/Jessem fence/lift route.

CMT spindle moulder cutters don't seem too expensive if you only get what you need when you need it. A power-feeder seems like a very good idea.

Good luck with the decision. That Casadei machine certainly looks like a solid, quality unit.

To me it seems that the spindle moulder offers more flexibility and ability to do things the router table can't, but at the expense of size/weight and lesser performance with smaller router bits. But again, I have no experience with either.

Cheers,

Dom

If you don't mind a little snow, you can buy an entire molding and flooring production business up here.
Turn-key operation. Housing is cheap. In your spare time, build a few fancy coffins.

I have a 3hp spindle moulder on my Luna combination machine. It terrifies me. I probably use it once for every 50 uses of my router table.


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Originally Posted by rrich

I don't know how you blokes buy coffee. Ours comes in a can 10mm diameter and 14.5mm tall

mm? That's a mighty small coffee

Originally Posted by themage21

Also, depending on the unit, if it comes with the old school slotted head with semi balanced blades, you need to grow a very large pair indeed just to fire the thing up. Imagine 1/2 kg of HSS coming loose at 8000rpm.

The feed unit is a bonus, I'd kill for one (or the ability to put one on my machine). It also allows you to get out of harms way.

Up until a couple of years ago, all our profiles were on the old slotted collars, but the "second generation" that have pins protruding in the bottom collar to prevent catastrophic failure should something come loose. We now have added a serrated head and a Euro style head with a large selection of profiles for both, but we still mainly run slotted collar knives. Just last week I had to make some curved moulding sections to match some moulding I'd made earlier in the year, so I was running slotted collars with a bearing, by hand, with a template; I was a little nervous for the first cut, but it ran really well and I definitely didn't feel like I was in any danger.

IMAG2978.jpg

Originally Posted by Skew ChiDAMN!!

My first 'adult' job was setting up & operating a Koenig (? Been a long time.) 12-head job the size of a semi-trailer, excluding outfeed, in a joinery that had 3 of the beasts side by side.

Probably a Weinig, arguably the Rolls-Royce of moulders. I got to do an intensive course on a 6-head last year and loved it. If you want to see monster moulders, look up Ledinek; some of their machines will feed at speeds up to 1200 m/min (not a typo) with 200kw just for the feed

The moulder is probably my favourite machine to run (and the bigger the head, the better), but it does require proper training because things can turn south quickly and you get a hell of a fright when they do. While I'm not scared of it, it does command a healthy dose of respect

LOL! Or why I don't use the Metric system.

Lets try about 4 CM and 14.5 CM.

Originally Posted by rrich

LOL! Or why I don't use the Metric system.

Lets try about 4 CM and 14.5 CM.

Hi Rich

Don't you mean 40 x 145 mm?

In practice we tend only to use the metric measures that are multiples of 1,000. Thus:

LENGTH - kilometre, metre, millimetre, micron. A micron is much sexier than a thou' !

VOLUME - Cubic metre or kilolitre, litre, millilitre.

But, as always, there are some exceptions:

• Height of a person is commonly measured in centimetres,
• Non-liquid volumes may be measured in cubic centimetres, and
• The Brits measure milk in litres and alcohol in decalitres.

Cheers

Graeme