Thread: Felder Thicknesser Feed Roller Friction Wheel problem

Thanks for this post.. I have a AD951 which I think the mechanicals maybe similar.

In the past whenever I had techs over to carry out calibration/maintenance/servicing on my machines (wide belt sander, panel saw etc) I always ask them their opinion about Felder/SCM, interestingly they unanimously agreed SCM or Italian machines are a lot easier to work on, whereas Felder is a &*%%#$& of a job to carry out any repair/service.

Hi Albert,
You have the AD951?! Wow, even bigger than my thicknesser! They are an awesome bit of kit, but damn they aren't cheap. As soon as I heard that noise I just saw $$$$ flying out the window.....
I had issues getting the electrical panel clear enough to be able to get in there to work on removing everything, and rang Felder NSW for some advice, and the service tech I spoke to confirmed that what I was doing was exactly how he does it, and he said that he 'has to fight with these every time he works on them'.
I was hoping there would be some way to get more slack in the wiring but he confirmed there isn't, so I had to get SWMBO to hold the panel to relieve the cables from any tension, whilst I set about pulling everything to bits. A royal PITA it was!

I discussed getting the wheel re-tyred (is that a word?!) and he said that for a one-off it doesn't make economical sense. And considering I was expecting to be out of pocket to the tune of $800 or more, I was relieved to learn that I could do the work myself and just get the replacement wheel shipped to me. Given I'm in a COVID locked down Sydney suburb, they weren't keen on coming out to fix it anyway, so that, and the possible cost encouraged me to figure the problem/repair myself.

I don't know about your machine, but assuming the mechanics are similar to mine, do you change the feed roller speed on the fly? I do, and I can't see anywhere in the manual that tells me to stop the machine before lifting the lever to change the feed speed (it just moves that friction wheel from one drive spindle to pressing against another one driven off the main motor, so I can't see that being a problem. Also, you need to have had your weetbix before trying to move that lever - it's not a very easy mechanism to move - I really need to heave on mine to shift it. Is yours similar?
When I go to put it all back together I'm going to see if there's any way to lube or otherwise ease the force required to move the feed roller lever between positions. I 'think' that's just how it's been designed, but I'd be keen on your experience with your model.

Mine was bought in 2010, so having the urethane tyre crack and split after 10 years is probably to be expected, but depending on how old your machine is and if you encounter the same problem at least you may now be willing to attempt the repair yourself.

Also, which Wide Belt Sander do you have ? That's on my wish list (one day). How long have you had it and what is your impression of it?

Originally Posted by TimberNut

Hi Albert,
You have the AD951?! Wow, even bigger than my thicknesser! They are an awesome bit of kit, but damn they aren't cheap. As soon as I heard that noise I just saw $$$$ flying out the window.....
I had issues getting the electrical panel clear enough to be able to get in there to work on removing everything, and rang Felder NSW for some advice, and the service tech I spoke to confirmed that what I was doing was exactly how he does it, and he said that he 'has to fight with these every time he works on them'.
I was hoping there would be some way to get more slack in the wiring but he confirmed there isn't, so I had to get SWMBO to hold the panel to relieve the cables from any tension, whilst I set about pulling everything to bits. A royal PITA it was!

I discussed getting the wheel re-tyred (is that a word?!) and he said that for a one-off it doesn't make economical sense. And considering I was expecting to be out of pocket to the tune of $800 or more, I was relieved to learn that I could do the work myself and just get the replacement wheel shipped to me. Given I'm in a COVID locked down Sydney suburb, they weren't keen on coming out to fix it anyway, so that, and the possible cost encouraged me to figure the problem/repair myself.

I don't know about your machine, but assuming the mechanics are similar to mine, do you change the feed roller speed on the fly? I do, and I can't see anywhere in the manual that tells me to stop the machine before lifting the lever to change the feed speed (it just moves that friction wheel from one drive spindle to pressing against another one driven off the main motor, so I can't see that being a problem. Also, you need to have had your weetbix before trying to move that lever - it's not a very easy mechanism to move - I really need to heave on mine to shift it. Is yours similar?
When I go to put it all back together I'm going to see if there's any way to lube or otherwise ease the force required to move the feed roller lever between positions. I 'think' that's just how it's been designed, but I'd be keen on your experience with your model.

Mine was bought in 2010, so having the urethane tyre crack and split after 10 years is probably to be expected, but depending on how old your machine is and if you encounter the same problem at least you may now be willing to attempt the repair yourself.

Also, which Wide Belt Sander do you have ? That's on my wish list (one day). How long have you had it and what is your impression of it?

I bought mine new in 2018, so its relatively new, I dont use it often, probably twice a week on average? hopefully I wont have this re-tyre issue, it sounds troublesome and unnecessarily expensive! I am fortunate that the Felder NZ is only 1.5km from where I am, yet they still charge me for call out and vehicle costs...

I dont have a lever to move on my machine, the feed speed is done electronically with a knob, see photo below.

knob.jpg

In a way I prefer mechanical lever, these electronics tend to fail a lot sooner than the mechanical devices...

My previous TP combo was a Robland NX410 (5 in 1 combi), the planer has two speeds, in the manual it says I can only change the speed when its running - a bit odd but guess thats how it is?

I only bought the Felder because back then there was no SCM TP combo in the country, and Felder had 2 AD951 with Silent cutter block.

My sander is a 2001 SCM 5 RCS 110. twin belt version, I had it for 5 years now. Its a great machine never gave me any issues other than the feed mat is getting stiff, I was looking at updating it next year but I got too excited after I received my SCM spindle moulder (Ti145EP) so I jumped the gun and ordered a panel saw update (L'Invincibile si X), the WBS will have to wait...

here is my workshop walk through if interested..

I'm about an hours drive from Felder, so I'm up for travel time to/from them to me, on top of work time and parts, so any visits from them add up $$ real quick. So when my machine went BANG...CLUNK, CLUNK, CLUNK, my heart stopped, and I could just envision lots of $$ going out the door real quick. It makes for an expensive day in the shed when you're just out there having fun. Luckily the end result will be a lot less costly that I first anticipated (if a real PITA to fix).


That's a cool collection of toys you have set up.


My machine has electronic rise and fall (thank goodness) but manual feed speed adjustment.
I actually just looked up the manual to see what the recommended approach was to adjusting the feed roller speed.
The manual says:
.....
5. Adjust the thicknessing height
6. Switch the machine on
7. Raise or lower the gear lever (to adjust feed speed)
8. Take up work position.....


So I guess that answers my question - they say to have it running and THEN adjust the feed speed (which is what I've been doing). So it looks like the broken urethane tyre isn't due to incorrect use, but rather just getting brittle with age I guess. If I'd been using it wrong surely the issue would have presented itself years ago, as the machine gets regular use.

Now I've just got to wait a few days for the replacement friction wheel to arrive, then the reassembly fun begins ...

I’ve replaced one of those rollers at a place that I worked at. You are correct it was a painful job and made me re-evaluate my thoughts on some Felder machines. They are good, when they are going and maintained properly. But built typically like lots of german stuff, to last forever, when looked after by germans who know them.

Originally Posted by TimberNut

I'm about an hours drive from Felder, so I'm up for travel time to/from them to me, on top of work time and parts, so any visits from them add up $$ real quick. So when my machine went BANG...CLUNK, CLUNK, CLUNK, my heart stopped, and I could just envision lots of $$ going out the door real quick. It makes for an expensive day in the shed when you're just out there having fun. Luckily the end result will be a lot less costly that I first anticipated (if a real PITA to fix).......

Now I've just got to wait a few days for the replacement friction wheel to arrive, then the reassembly fun begins ...

I hated fixing modern machines cos its not a simple task and you need special training and know how to do it properly, I tried before and realised its a lot cheaper to hire professional to do it, no matter what the quote says.

sometimes I wonder if Felder make machines cheap because they know they can easily make them back from repairs? a woodworking friend of mine has a Felder FB610 bandsaw, but he has real issues with it, he tried to fix it himself but failed, he really needs a tech out there to service it but he hasnt called them in cos he knew its going to be $$$ to repair. He bought it new.

keep us posted about the replacement.

I bought an SCM Panel Saw second hand. Its a 1983 model. I found it on Ebay. I had used a few of these saws when I was working and I knew that they are nearly bullet proof. I had to drive 400km down and back. When I got it home (it weighs at least 1000kg) and set it up the first thing I wanted to check was how square it was cutting from the travelling fence....it was ready to go "out of the box". I have had it for about 7 years and during that time I had to replace the main spindle bearings as they were getting noisy. The bearings were on the shelf at our local nut and bearing shop and the procedure to disassemble/reassemble was written in the Manual. The bearings were retained in a cylinder that was easy to get off the machine, then just a matter of pressing out the old then pressing in the new. At the time I thought that someone had really thought about maintenance at the design stage of making these saws

I would hate to know what a Techy would cost to do the bearing job

The drive wheel on Felder PT combos does not like being left engaged for long periods when the machine isn’t being used. My old combo would remind me with the square tyre thump thump thump routine when I failed to disengage the feed lever and came back a week later.

I have a love/hate* thing going on with Felder combos but I recently bought a couple of old ones for the usual reasons.

*They are great things, but difficult to repair without a zen attitude and five jointed arms

Originally Posted by Greg Q

The drive wheel on Felder PT combos does not like being left engaged for long periods when the machine isn’t being used. My old combo would remind me with the square tyre thump thump thump routine when I failed to disengage the feed lever and came back a week later.

I have a love/hate* thing going on with Felder combos but I recently bought a couple of old ones for the usual reasons.

*They are great things, but difficult to repair without a zen attitude and five jointed arms

Greg, you make an interesting point there. TBH I can't say I ever really bothered to return the feed roller setting to 0 (neutral) after finishing thicknessing for the day. Generally my workflow is such that usually when I stop thicknessing for the day, chances are I'll still have more pieces to thickness tomorrow, so I just leave the machine as-is and come back to it the next day.

After reading your comment about your experiences it would make sense that constant pressure against 1 section of the urethane layer would result in a depression over time that would result in the thump thump thump. It could definitely account for my one ultimately spitting out a section. It was 10 years old, so it could also just have gotten brittle over time, but my lack of attentiveness to returning the feed roller lever to neutral probably hasn't helped.

I've just re-read the entire manual to see if they make any reference to that, and under '9.10.4 Thickenss Planing' section they give the steps to prepare and use the machine for thicknessing. Interestingly, the last point/step, says to return the lever to '0'. It makes no reference to this being essential for good machine maintenance or anything, and no other reference to leaving it engaged being a bad practice, but from now on I'll be making sure that is a regular habit of mine as it can spend long durations between usage.

Here's the update, now that the replacement wheel has arrived.

New wheel, next to old broken one:
20210916_123802.jpg
A view of the innards with everything removed, ready for installation of replacement:
20210916_124340.jpg
New friction wheel installed. This shows how little room you have to work in. If you look at the leads at the bottom you will see there is no free-play in them so you can't move that plate any further away to get more room to work. Not really a great idea. To disconnect all those cables would be an absolute nightmare (no quick-connects on anything) so you'd ultimately have to unscrew about 50-100 wires from their respective terminal blocks etc, and you'd have no hope of getting them all back correctly, so you have to just work with the machine like this. A royal PITA it is!

20210916_124945.jpg20210916_124958.jpg
The blocks of wood under the motor are to allow me to get a pry bar in there to lift the back edge of the motor so I can tighten it with equal pressure on it's support plate. It required me getting someone else to 'take the weight' of the motor whilst I tightened the long grub screw on top, followed by the bolts of the support plate, on the other side of the machine.
20210916_131005.jpg20210916_131055.jpg

You can see where the spanner is that one of the 4 bolts holding the motor is obscured by the friction wheel. 3 of them are accessible with a ratchet and socket, but the 4th needs to be done up after the friction plate is installed, which means it can only be accessed with a spanner. Another poor design choice. It would be better if you could tighten the motor plate first, before installing the friction wheel, but you can't because you need to move the motor to get slack to get the friction wheel on. So it goes back in before the motor get's re-tightened.
20210916_131718.jpg
All parts reinstalled, this just leaves lubing the chains and sprockets, which I figured would be a good idea seeing as I had easy access to them at this time. With the lever in the '0' position, it's easy to wind the friction wheel by hand to rotate the drive chain so you can lube all parts. 20210916_133659.jpg
Once the machine was powered on and tested briefly, the rear panel was reinstalled, and finally the 4 bolts on the inside of the machine, which are not easily identified was needing to be removed when pulling everything to bits in the first place. DAMHIKT. )
20210916_135223.jpg

Total time to install everything and get all back up and running was about 2 hours, but that was with an abundance of caution. If I had to do it again, I could do the reinstall easily in an hour or so. So all-in-all not a massively complex job, just more of a pain, as it requires 2 people and you need to work in a confined space. But if anyone else encounters this issue I'd suggest that you should be ok to tackle the repair yourself if you're ok with a spanner or 2 and are ok with basic mechanical maintenance.

Holy crap thats one nasty job just to replace the wheel.

This reminded me when I had to replace the saw motor on my Robland combination machine (NX410). I looked at the machine and realised it will be more efficient to get the technicians.

I called the technician in, I was busy so I couldnt be in the workshop when they were carrying out the work, by late afternoon I came back home and it seems the motor was not replaced.

I gave them a call, was told I need to either send the machine to them or lift the machine up by means of forklift/hoist so the motor can be accessed from underneath the machine, I dont have a forklift back then, and was not happy with the answer they gave me, I reluctantly paid their bill.

I endup replacing the motor myself. not easy at all. I use my pallet mover to slowly jack up the machine to a height where its accessible, then I shovel the motor from underneath the machine, lift the motor up with two long hook, when its roughly in place or high enough you grab it with your other hand from top of the machine (only if you have relatively skinny arm), while you try to put the motor in place with one hand, you secure the motor in place with a set of bolt/nuts - with the other hand, there are several "accessible hatch" a lot easier if you have someone to help you.

The Robland was about half the cost of Felder's combination machine, its only at times like this you realise cheap machine are cheaper for a reason or two

I sold the Robland after this motor replacement and kind of told myself that I will never buy another cheap-er machine.

I am going to become intimately familiar with the 1996 BF6-26 that I bought cheap. It wasn’t cheap when new, but it has been unloved and needs a complete overhaul. After I bought it a newer, pristine BF6-31 came along which I will keep and use as a reference.

Originally Posted by TimberNut

Here's the update, now that the replacement wheel has arrived.

New wheel, next to old broken one:
20210916_123802.jpg
A view of the innards with everything removed, ready for installation of replacement:
20210916_124340.jpg
New friction wheel installed. This shows how little room you have to work in. If you look at the leads at the bottom you will see there is no free-play in them so you can't move that plate any further away to get more room to work. Not really a great idea. To disconnect all those cables would be an absolute nightmare (no quick-connects on anything) so you'd ultimately have to unscrew about 50-100 wires from their respective terminal blocks etc, and you'd have no hope of getting them all back correctly, so you have to just work with the machine like this. A royal PITA it is!

20210916_124945.jpg20210916_124958.jpg
The blocks of wood under the motor are to allow me to get a pry bar in there to lift the back edge of the motor so I can tighten it with equal pressure on it's support plate. It required me getting someone else to 'take the weight' of the motor whilst I tightened the long grub screw on top, followed by the bolts of the support plate, on the other side of the machine.
20210916_131005.jpg20210916_131055.jpg

You can see where the spanner is that one of the 4 bolts holding the motor is obscured by the friction wheel. 3 of them are accessible with a ratchet and socket, but the 4th needs to be done up after the friction plate is installed, which means it can only be accessed with a spanner. Another poor design choice. It would be better if you could tighten the motor plate first, before installing the friction wheel, but you can't because you need to move the motor to get slack to get the friction wheel on. So it goes back in before the motor get's re-tightened.
20210916_131718.jpg
All parts reinstalled, this just leaves lubing the chains and sprockets, which I figured would be a good idea seeing as I had easy access to them at this time. With the lever in the '0' position, it's easy to wind the friction wheel by hand to rotate the drive chain so you can lube all parts. 20210916_133659.jpg
Once the machine was powered on and tested briefly, the rear panel was reinstalled, and finally the 4 bolts on the inside of the machine, which are not easily identified was needing to be removed when pulling everything to bits in the first place. DAMHIKT. )
20210916_135223.jpg

Total time to install everything and get all back up and running was about 2 hours, but that was with an abundance of caution. If I had to do it again, I could do the reinstall easily in an hour or so. So all-in-all not a massively complex job, just more of a pain, as it requires 2 people and you need to work in a confined space. But if anyone else encounters this issue I'd suggest that you should be ok to tackle the repair yourself if you're ok with a spanner or 2 and are ok with basic mechanical maintenance.

Thank you so much for sharing this information. I have the exact same machine. 2012 build. Only hobby use with 100 hours on the machine. Haven't used much since moving house 4 years ago, but the couple of times I have had small jobs I noticed it started having feed problems. Like you, extremely disappointed with the price paid. I am 3 hours from Felder NSW so no option but to do it myself. Confirming my feed lever is very stiff and have always returned it to '0' after use (majority of the time), but not saying I may have forgotten once or twice over the years and may have not realised for several months.

keenwoodworker - you're very welcome. I've learnt a lot from others posting their hard-earned experience here on the forums, so I pay it forward whenever I can.
My feed lever has always been tough to shift, even from brand new (make sure you've had a big breakfast before yanking on it!)
I lubed everything up when I did the friction wheel replacement, and that helped a bit but the lever is not smooth to move regardless.

If your feed issues are just that the roller is struggling to pull the wood through, but no clunking noise with the feed rollers engaged, then things to check are for resin/gunk on the feed rollers themselves, and also some sibergleit sprayed onto the bed of the machine. I was amazed how much easier the wood glides through after applying a quick spray of that stuff and a quick wipe off. I'm sure there are other sprays/solutions out there but I went and bought some spray bottles of that from Felder, and it works a treat. If you're not using the machine too often, then a quick spray and wipe of that sibergleit before use make a world of difference.

If you do need to replace that friction wheel, don't let all the above info put you off - it's not a 'hard' job if you're a bit handy with tools. It's not rocket-science, it just takes some time when you are unsure as you slow down and double check everything. I found taking lots of photos at every step helped me to be confident I wouldn't stuff anything up. It's fiddly - and definitely will require assistance for a couple of steps, but if you have a better half willing to lend a hand for an hour or 2 you should be ok.
Once I'd pulled it all to bits, I rang Felder to check I wasn't off track, but the technician there confirmed they do it just the same way I did, and noted it's a PITA job.
I wouldn't recommend disconnecting all the short cables at the bottom to get extra working room - just work around them whilst they remain connected.

If you take it on and get stuck at any point just sing out - I'm happy to share what (little) knowledge I have if it can be of assistance.