Need advice on Grizzly GW1018HW 8" Jointer

[Darrell Dorsey]

Just purchased this jointer and am very happy with what I've gotten.

The performance has been excellent. I placed the order on last Monday, it arrived at the carriers on Thursday morning and I went a picked it up on Friday afternoon. There would have been an extra charge for a lift gate truck and I have a long driveway on a cul-du-sac, and I doubt they would have backed the truck up to my garage.

But to my question. Everything went together very easily, the fit and finish is good. But I had trouble aligning the motor drive pulley with the cutter head pulley.

The manual says to make a plumb bob (which I did) or use a straight edge. There is not enough room to use my 2" X 24" precision straight edge. And because the pulleys are not plumb to each other, I could only use the plumb bob on one edge of the pulleys. I had to shift the motor drive pulley in some (as instructed). For now the pulleys are close, but I have no way to determine if the two pulleys are actually planner (like on my bandsaw). So far it seems to be running well, but there is a little vibration (I believe that most of this is due to poor quality belts)..

How have some of you insured that your pulleys on these machines are lined up properly. I've sent this same message to Grizzly tech support, so far they have been good about answering my questions before the purchase. But I wanted to get a jump on your thoughts.

Before the machine arrived, I down loaded the latest manual from the Grizzly site. In hindsight, the manual only mentions using a straight edge to align the pulleys. The interesting thing is that the jointer arrived with an older manual (one for a GW1018, + a parts list insert for the GW1018HW). This manual was not as good as the latest, but it did have better instructions (use a plumb bob) for aligning the pulleys.

Also the belts that came with this machine are terrible. The machine uses two 3L520 belts. They don't seem to match very well. It appears that they both are not tensioned the same. There are some wide lumps where the belts are connected. And they already seems to have a bit of set to them. I have been using the power twist belts on my Jet contractors saw and on a jet band saw, as well as on my old Delta 6" jointer. After researching and reading a lot of the recent post, about link belts, I had decided to use the supplied belts. But it seems these belts need to be replaced.

Thanks again for your advice.

Darrell

[Tom Kohlman]

plumb bob will work if it is on a truly level surface to begin with (don't have any of those in my garage/workshop so can't help you with that). I'd rely on hand turning by sight and skip the micrometer...it is a jointer, not a space shuttle. Level the feet as best you can to eliminate any rocking and take it from there. There is enough cast iron on the bed and fence to do what it supposed to do and you should devote your time to those instead of some minor vibration. As for poor quality belt, it will work just fine...its only purpose is to drive power from the motor to the cutter head. If you get the alignment reasonably close, it will "forgive" the rest. If way too out of line you can kiss your cutterhead bearings "bye-bye" but I think that would be a tough act to do.

[James D. Kountz]

Laser line.

Jim

[Darrell Dorsey]

Tom, Thanks, I'll make sure it's level. I did not do this before, not sure what I was thinking. I've not checked my garage floor, but I'd guess it's not all that level. I have the jointer in a Jet universal mobile base, but I can shim the wheels where needed.

I do realize that I'm not trying to send a man to the moon, but I don't want to screw up my new machine either. It just seems to me that the pulleys should be as co-planar as possible, and there's no real good way to check this as I can see. It sounds like your suggesting that close is good enough.

Grizzly tech support wrote me back but I don't think they understood my question, maybe a better answer tomorrow. All they said is that alignment can be tricky and that I should move the pulleys in or out as needed. I knew that already.

Also, the big problem with the belts is just that, they are "belts" not one but two. They don't seem to be all that close in length (not a matched pair), so one belt doesn't seem to be in good tension, and again, they are both a little lumpy at the connection point. Grizzly did suggest that link belts could help with vibration if needed, but I don't feels it all that bad. I can stand a nickel on the tables after start-up. My main concern was the lumps in the belt and the lack of tension in one of the belts.

Darrell

[Tom Kohlman]

Darrell

I have Delta 6" on Delta mobile base. For leveling, wheels do not seem to matter (for whatever reason they seem to find appropriate ground) and the stationary "feet" are adjustable via the bolts and even they seem to have enough play in them to compensate for less than level surface. Again I would only worry about getting the "rocking" out of the thing and go from there. Perfect "co-planer" on the pulleys can't be that critical since there is (are) rubber belt(s) running the whole thing and it (they) has (have) some play. Again I think the "eyeball" test will get you close enough to avoid problems. Too far out of alignment and you may have trouble with the upper bearings but that will take some doing (study all the cast iron surrounding the mount and you will probably see my point). Barring that you may get faster belt and maybe pulley wear if too far out of line so get it as close as you can but I wouldn't sweat it to the extreme. Pay more attention to the table, cutterhead and fence alignments and you will be a happy camper.

Enjoy the tool...jointer is one of my personal favorites.