Thread: Hare & forbes T-318 thicknesser

Anyone with comments/suggestions???
It is back with H&F for them to look at. They seem to think there is something wrong with it but have to wait to get to it.

Anyone with some suggestions as to what could be the problem/problems????

Two things that come to mind from your breif description are; a drive belt may be slipping and not giving you a positive drive, and the other may be(remote chance) that you are trying to cut too much off at a time. I know some of these machines say max cut 3mm but in all practicality I think they are referring to cutting balsa. A more realistic cut is around 1mm even on radiata.
I have an Elu thicknesser (not a good model!) and to get it to feed, I had to cut away part of the belt guard to get the lever to engage the drive, more purchase on the belt.
How cranky is the timber you are puttng through? If it is twisted it could jam things up
Just a few thoughts
Regards Rod

Thanks Rod.
The machine was working very well. I am conscious of the amount of material taking off on each pass. So I was doing multiple passes to bring the board down to size.
The machine itself has had little work put through.

I did some red cedar boards about 1.5m long x 100mm wide through to bring them down from 19mm to 10mm. Took ages using multiple passes, small bites.

The last use was on white cedar on similar boards down to a similar size. This is when the problem started. Bords not feeding, or feeding intermittently. When they didn't feed I'd have to assist them through by pushing them through. I did notice the height adjustment handle/winder was moving when the boards stoopped feeding. I thought this was just normal with the vibrations. But if I held it in position when the board was fed through it still miss-fed and the handle didn't move.

I checked the infeed and outfeed trays to make sure they were aligned as I was getting severe snipe. I cleaned the trays and used Topsaver to ease the friction, cleaned and checked the feed rollers. After that I could see no other adjustments and there are no adjustments mentioned in the manual that came with the machine.

I haven't changed the blades as I didn't think they would be blunt from the small amount of use. But perhaps that could be a problem???