Edgebander

**Rossluck** · 8th March 2007, 04:00 PM

I bought an edgebander on Ebay the other day. I didn't really mean to. It is a Manea, a huge hot glue machine that has all the bells and whistles. I noticed it when I was scanning through Ebay, and I put a watch on it to see how much it would go for. When on the last day no-one had bid on it at the $300.00 starting bid, I decided to whack $315.00 on it as a sort of a gamble. I won it at $305.00.

When I rang the seller, he turned out to be a mechanic who ran a workshop. A cabinet maker relative had passed on and left he and bis wife a workshop full of equipment, and the edgebander was the last of this. He had no use for it and it was just taking up space. He told me that it was in perfect working order, but could do with a cleanup, as it had been sitting around for a few months.

So, I hired a car trailer and went and picked it up. The damn thing is over four metres long and weighs around 2 tonnes. His forklift had trouble lifting it onto the trailer. This was a surprise to me and my flimsy tie-down straps, and meant a very slow trip home (4 cyl Camry!) around the back roads.

Fortunately we have an old forklift, so I got it off without problems, and now I'm studying the damn thing to try and find out how it all works. My intention (sorry cabinet makers) is to use it to make what I need to make here (a new kitchen and two bathrooms and built-ins), and then sell it.

Now I need help from anyone out there who uses edgebanders. I'm OK with machinery, but my internet searches for info didn't return much. The machine is three-phase and air, and from what I can work out, the sequence runs:

Platform for tape
Some sort of air ram on the platform, like a vyce ???
Glue pot on the other side (needs cleaning out)
Then an air guillotine to cut the tape
Then two sliding cutters (are these for trimming the ends? How?)
Then two (top and bottom) trimming cutters.

I believe these cutters are High Frequency because they run at 200 hz. There's a large, heavy green box attached to the machine by three phase cables, and my guess is that it is a transformer to achieve this high frequency.

Any info would be greatly appreciated.

**Felder** · 8th March 2007, 04:10 PM

C'mooonnnnn! Break out the camera, Rossluck!

Old edgebanders can be a pain in the date to fix up so they are working 100%. I don't like being the bearer of bad news......

Sounds like you have the sequence correct. Your challenge from here will be making sure that the top and bottom trimmers do trim the top and bottom edges, and not 1 or 2 mm higher or lower. The sliding cutters can also be tricky. Lots of fiddling around.

How easy is it to gain access to the working parts of the machine? We need pictures, my friend!

**Rossluck** · 8th March 2007, 04:46 PM

Hello Felder,

My own impression is that the machine's set up pretty well. When I went to pick it up everything the seller told me rang true (i.e., that his uncle was using the machine daily up until his untimely death, and it just sat there after that). But I enjoy mucking around with stuff like this anyway.

I tried to download the photos from the ebay ad, but they seem to have changed their system so that all you can save is the URL, and the URL I can save takes you to my "MyEbay".

This URL

http://www.murphyauctions.net/past/asi.html#pic3

takes you to a site where there's a vaguely similar machine (third image down on the left). The one that I bought is in better nick and a more modern, slightly more compact version of this, but the controls and the basic layout looks the same.

I'll take some photos and post them as soon as I can.

**journeyman Mick** · 8th March 2007, 05:31 PM

Rossluck,
I've been watching that machine, from memory he had it for sale a while back also. I've worked with a few edgebanders and, as Brendan said, they can be very finicky machines. Actually,let me rephrase that, they are very finicky machines, no two ways about it. Even new machines take a lot of finesse to run succesfully. My edgebander is a lot simpler than that and I can have it running perfectly one day and then, without touching any of the set up have a terrible time next day, having to readjust a lot of the settings. The glue pots can take a lot of work to clean up, although I believe that there is a solution you can boil up in the pot to loosen the deposits. Once you do get it cleaned up and running it's important not to leave the glue pot turned on if you're not using the machine for any stretch of time as this is what causes the deposits. Newer machines have a "sleep" mode for the pot, keeping it warm enough that it's ready for use quickly, but cool enough that it doesn't cook the glue.

Best bet is to clean it and fire it up so that you can see what everything does. If it needs adjustment, don't adjust anything without writing down what, and how much, you adjust so you can get back to where you started from. Most of them require filtered and oiled air and all of them are very fussy about the quality of the air. Any moisture in the air is generally quite acidic and corrosive and will cause prolems with all the little control valves and "spools".

Good luck,

Mick

PS here's some of the pics from ebay

**Rossluck** · 8th March 2007, 05:48 PM

Thanks for that, Mick. I was just about to upload the photos I took but the Ebay ones are much better.

**Felder** · 9th March 2007, 10:06 AM

Originally Posted by journeyman Mick

Rossluck,
I've been watching that machine, from memory he had it for sale a while back also. I've worked with a few edgebanders and, as Brendan said, they can be very finicky machines. Actually,let me rephrase that, they are very finicky machines, no two ways about it. Even new machines.......

......

........

......with all the little control valves and "spools".

Good luck,

Mick

As usual, Mick knows his stuff.

Check out this link for hints on cleaning your glue pot.
http://www.woodweb.com/knowledge_bas...t_Cleanup.html

Thread: Edgebander

Thread Tools

Search Thread

Edgebander

Similar Threads

Edgebander

holz her edgebander "overload feed chain"

Tags for this Thread

Posting Permissions