I have just about had it with poor quality designed equipment. We have a combo planer thicknesser at school (largely chosen by lack of space) and it has been nothing but trouble.

Right from purchase, it struggled to start but then once going it was ok. Often it would just sit and "buzz" due to lack of starting torque. Finally last week it just would not start.


It looks like one of these only it is mainly coloured grey with a bit of blue. It was not from Timbercon but looks the same (the company that sold it has a different rebadged model now)

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I took the motor out to get it repaired. Strangely there was no plate on the motor or the machine to say what it was..power amps rpm etc . I thought that was a legal requirement?

First it was rewound and that made almost no difference !@#& And yes I did check to make sure the cutter head was not binding or the belts over tightened.

I took it back to the motor guy and he said it was chinese junk and did not understand how it could ever work properly as it only had a capacitor on the run winding. He modified it by putting a start switch on the end of the shaft and a capacitor on the start winding and what a huge difference! It instantly fires up now. It probably would have been cheaper to buy an Aussie motor and get the pully/shaft remachined if I had of known.


The other big issue is the poor chip collection... it just throws them back onto the wood and they get rolled in...looks #@^& "great" on pine!... and that is with a 5 hp extractor connected to it and all the other gates shut off.

Originally about 6 years ago the purchase price was close to $3000 so it wasn't exactly cheap put in reality would best be used as a ships anchor! My predecessor did not do his homework when he chose this one!

By comparison a $400 portable Ryobi does a much better job (but can only take much smaller cuts) and its chip extraction works way better.


Chipman