For those of you with teh 16/32 and 22/44 sanders, I have a question. I read a fine woodworking article from a while back talking about the
16/32 and some other sanders. It says that for the open-ended sanders, when you sand a wide board in two passes, you have to readjust the drum so that it's no longer parallel with the table. That is, you have to make the drum farther from the table at the open end than it is at the closed end, thus creating an artificial crown in the board. The article says that if you don't do this, you end up with a 1/32" groove where open end of the drum is. Is this true? The article looks like it's a number of years old. Did they fix this? I'd hate to readjust the drum parallelness when switching between wide and narrow boards.
Great... I thinking of getting one, solved the electricity problem, and now you bring this up. :~) I suppose that would be good to know. I wonder if the article discover this situation or if the owners manual mentions this.
As an extra question, Does any one have the 10-20? I am seriously considering that one also.
I was planning on getting the 22/44 (after moving the shop now :-P ). But after reading about this, I may have to spend the extra money and get a closed-end sander. I'm not liking that idea though because it means that I would just about have to double (or more) the price to get one with the same 44" capacity. I *really* want to be able to sand table tops. This is enough of an issue to make me compromise on the width though. My shop time is really limited. And drum sanders are already fussy without this thrown in.
The 16-32 and larger requires a 20 amp circuit. I thought I only had a single 15 amp circuit in my garage until I checked the breaker box and discovered the single 20 amp circuit for the washing machine. I was not aware that that outlet was separate and 5 amp higher capacity.
I do not mind sanding the occasional large surface and most of my furniture has panels around 18 inches wide. I mostly want the drum sander for sanding small box parts and inlay. According to Performax the pieces being sanded can be as short as 2-1/2" long.
Where have you seen a closed end sander with 44" capacity for only twice as much money? Most that I have seen start in the 3 to 4 thousand dollar range.
Additionally , take a look at the Performax site and pull up the PDF manual. IIRC there is an actual adjustment knob for making this adjustment after loosening a few cap screws. This may only be a few minute adjustment.
I seldom sand things that are so wide that I have to flip them.
Usually, I plane the boards, run them through the sander, glue them up, and then touch up with a random orbital sander to make up for any minor goofs in glue up alignment.
On the rare occasions that I have done the "flip", I don't change the table adjustment. It's a huge PITA to get that table level, so I'm not going to touch that setting. I flip it and then touch up with a ROS.
Yes you have to have it just a hair higher on the outside.When I had mine I just dialed it in and left it like that. It was maybe 1/64th if that. These are great for widths that fit within the the width of the belt. It is really a bit gimmicky to do wider widths. I always hand sanded after for wider widths.
If at all possible I would sand separate panels at the max width, then join them and hand sand out the rest of the way. Now that I have a 24" wide belt I still use this approach. I did a 2" thick butcher block top
3' wide by 5' long. I did a buch of 8-10" wide glue-ups and sanded them down to a standard thickness. Then I joined them into two 18" wides and sanded those in the wide belt, then joined the two pieces and hand sanded.
If I had my choice, I would much rather have a 24" wide drum than an
18/36 open sided. Plus the open sides units are usually 1 1/2 hp and the drums are 4 or 5hp.
BW
brianlann> For those of you with teh 16/32 and 22/44 sanders, I have a question.
First, how many >32" wide pieces are you ever going to sand? If it's less than even two dozen over the course of maybe 20 years of woodworking, how can you justify the huge machine?
Next, by your own admission, you have "really limited" shop time. Now how many >32" pieces are you going to be sanding?
Finally, even that big, $10,000 Timesavers sander Norm has in The New Yankee Workshop is only a 36" (and which, by the way, is almost assuredly a 3-phase machine). Do you think you're going to be able to find a sander with more capacity for significantly less money?
For the very few times you need that capacity, you'd be far better off either renting time on a sander in a commercial shop (if possible) or just subbing it out outright (The Hardwood Connection out in Sycamore--west of town on 64 just past Peace Rd) has a widebelt sander and would probably do it under those conditions).
Save your money and your space for things you'll use more often and are less upfront dollars (and that won't take up space all out of proportion to their use).
I have never been able to get it perfectly parallel. So I make sure the error is to having the outside a bit higher. Not a serious problem; you just have to be sure not to sand something on the extreme outside, lower the drum and then sand on the inside, because it is too much.
It's limited for now. My hope is that I'll be using these machines for decades. That may be unrealistic. But I think it's a worthy goal.
You're right, I can't really justify it. I'm just worried about paying $2000 (for example) for a 24" machine when I can pay $2500 for a 32" machine. That may be unrealistic. There's a sweet spot somewhere I haven't identified. I guess my goal is to get as much drum sander as I can for $2500 or less. Once it goes over that price, I start getting flak from the accountant. I still need to do a lot more research.
Originally, I had decided on the 22/44 since it would do 22" wide boards just fine, and had a way to do the large boards when I may occasionally need that. Only now there's (maybe) a price to be paid for that extra feature. This has also got me thinking again about motor size, dual drums, flat drum vs velcro, and all that stuff. For about $1800, it looks like grizzly has one that's 23.5", but has two drums and 5hp vs 1.5hp on the peformax. I have to wonder which machine I would be happier with. It seems like you get a lot more with the griz for the extra $500.
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Finally, even that big, $10,000 Timesavers sander Norm has in The New
His machine is a wide belt sander. I'm looking for a drum sander, mainly because of cost. And while I'd love to have a wide belt sander like that one, it's a production machine. And that's really a case of can't justify the cost. Besides, with a machine like that I start to running out of subpanel and dust collector, even (or maybe especially) if it were single phase.
You're right of course. Maybe I've become obsessive compulsive about cry once. :-)
I'm not so much worried about the crown as I am the groove they talked about. If you can adjust the open end so that it's 1/64" or even 1/32" higher, then leave it there forever. That would probably be fine. Chances are, I would never notice since it's the wide boards that would tend to have this much error in thickness rather than places where you're joining like table aprons or legs.
I just want to avoid having to ever adjust this setting much. To me, having to do that would be like having to adjust your jointer knives between every board.
My main goal for a drum sander is to reduce the amount of sanding time I have. If I have to spend 15 minutes sanding a table top with the ROS, that's not a big deal. If this machine saves me an hour on sanding the top, I think it's worth it. Chances are, it would do a better job sanding than I would.
Has anyone ever upgraded the motor on a 22/44? I'm not sure if I would even need more than the 1.5.
Leave the "outside" dimension slightly higher(very slightly) than the inside. You will never notice the difference unless you carefully use a micrometer to measure the center differential. Using this method does indeed eliminate any chance of a sanding "ridge" in the center.
I have been using a 22/24 on a RAS for about 20-22 years. I now own a 16/32 stand-alone and have not re-adjusted it since the original install 3 years ago. Enough said. Enjoy, the Performax is a great tool.
For small parts, I'd take a serious look at building one yourself. For short boards you really don't need a conveyor. Quite happy with mine so far, though there's been a bump or two along the way. Save quite a bit of money building it, and you can use a 220v motor to solve your no longer existing electrical problem. But it's the sort of thing that will pay for itself no matter how much you spend.
It's small, too small for me, but you might also take a look at the Byrnes sander that I modeled a lot of mine on.
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inch width, little over 1" max thickness. The one reservation I have about recommending it would be that I emailed the guy about custom building one with greater max thickness and got no reply. But it seems like an excellent machine.
Yeah that might be a bit small. Thanks for reminding me about the home built sanders. Actually IIRC ShopNotes recently had an issue covering building your own and using the TS to power it. That would not work for me since I am using a cabinet saw but I could probably have it run independently with its own motor.
you initially align the sander, do it without any sandpaper installed on either the drum or the table. You will need a good reference that has parallel edges to get the setup done right - I used a 24" aluminum straight edge from Lee Valley that I have. The tips about removing the spring and making that mod really works - try it.
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