Cutting bits for 50mm spindle moulder

[Richard]

Sent again, hopefully as Plain Text - duh!

[Andy Dingley]

I've got a 1925-vintage army manual of field engineering (spanners, not shovels). Fascinating read - lots of advice on how to start hot-bulb oil engines, how many mules you'll need to bring firewood to a field kitchen, that sort of thing. It also has a section of carpentry for reinforcing earthworks, or building barracks. In the chapter on woodworking machines it mentions with great emphasis the hazards of the square-head jointer and moulding machine, how such things are obsolete and how they're far too dangerous for a squaddie to consider using.

The modern version is over here:

whole site is worth reading)

Now I've never seen a square-head machine - and I've looked. They're so old they really have just disappeared by now. But there are still several dangerous types of spindle moulder head around (I can show you the chipped wall in a friend's workshop) and the PUWER 98 legislation tried to finally stamp these out. Five years to enforce it and get up to date, so now it's in place. I for one am quite happy about this. Spindle moulders aren't the death-wish machines that many people think, but they still have a huge potential for being so.

There are several problems that spindle moulder rules needed to address: moulder head shape, tooling projection, balance, knife retention and spin-down.

A spindle moulder is a big lump of a rotating head with a pair of flat knives fastened to it. Because the knives are flat, they're easily made to custom profiles.

The first moulders had square heads and the knives fastened to them on the outside. There were no finger accidents with these - because the rotating head had large recesses on either side (for a square isn't round) then it soon became obvious that any "minor" finger-trimming accident turned into the loss of a whole hand, because the head would grab and pull it in. So square heads had to go.

Modern circular or near-circular heads don't have this same ability to catch a whole hand. But for moulders, rather than jointers (flat surfaces only), they may need to make a deep cut so as to form a large moulding. Apart from the hand-grab risk, there's the regular problem that feeding the timber in carelessly can cause a big "catch" and the piece is thrown back out at you. So tooling now needs to have cut limiters in place (dummy knives), which restrict the maximum exposure of the cutter edge itself. Even so, a spindle moulder accident is still much nastier than a jointer accident - if you have a tool that can cut deep, you just can't make it entirely safe.

The ability to grind up new knife profiles in the workshop was itself a source of hazard. The most common spindle accident was a home-made knife that was out of balance or poorly held, getting thrown out of the head and across the workshop. So there needs to be more care about always using _pairs_ of knives, not just lead sheet counterweights, and taking some care to balance things. PUWER now also requires all heads to have both clamps and a secondary locking pin or wedge. This change made most of the older spindle moulder heads of 5+ years ago obsolete and required their replacement.

The other PUWER change was that all machines (not just moulders) must now coast to a stop rapidly, or be fitted with brakes. Rather than the old cast iron heads (which needed rework anyway), this encouraged lightweight aluminium heads. There have been plenty of accidents were stock was accidentally pushed into a "switched off" head that was still spinning quietly some time afterwards.

To get an old 30mm or even 1 1/4" machine up to modern standards isn't hard - you buy it a new head and tooling. Even regrinding the 1 1/4" spindle down to 30mm isn't too expensive. I've never seen a "modern" head in this size - the machines were ground down, not the heads bored out. For 2" though, the sheer rotating mass can't meet the spin-down limits without an electric brake being added - and that gets expensive.

I think I've used a 50mm machine, but that was a multi-head multi-thousand-quid production behemoth with electric braking. The "small workshop grade" machines are just sticking with 30mm.

[Holly, in France]

I was talking about something like:

again I haven't done the tinyurl thing but it's short enough to be able to paste together IMO

Given the difference in prices and availability, that might possibly be an option depending on the exact structure of the thing. However, I suspect there might not be enough metal to do it without weakening it or some other problem would arise, and boring it out wouldn't be a diy job (for us anyway) so by the time we had found and paid someone to do it and waited for it and........it might be just easier to buy the right thing in the first place.

-- Holly, in France. Holiday home in the Dordogne, website:

[e-mail]

[Holly, in France]

It is what I would call a serious machine, see my reply to Andy Hall, but I'm not very familiar with them and I have no idea about the soft electric braking! >

Yes, 30mm seems to be much more easily available here too, but 20mm and

50mm are not uncommon it would appear. The site suggests using more readily available 30mm ones on a 20mm shaft by using reducers, which they also sell. Shame it's not so easy to solve the problem the other way around! I also found a paragraph on the hmdiffusion site which might be of intereste and translates roughly as follows:

Many diameters of holders are available on spindle moulders:

20mm - this has for a long time been the diameter adopted by machines for amateurs. On finds many of these machines for sale secondhand but be aware that there are practically no more tools made in 20mm diameter and that the new types of tools are all in 30mm. There remains the possibility of using 30mm tools on a 20mm shaft using reducing rings. 30mm - this is now the standard the most used and one finds the biggest range of tools. It is used as much by the professional as by the amateur. 50mm - a diameter specific to France and largely used in the trade. A number of amateurs are tempted by the purchase of a secondhand machine. It is necessary to point out that these are heavy and indestructable machines that one can often buy inexpensively. But, pay attention to the following: the tools in diameter 50mm are well outside the normal price range, so what one gains in buying one of these machines one can lose on the other side.

So that explains alot then :-) Hope it was of interest to someone!

Holly

[Holly, in France]

Never heard of 50mm spindle moulder - I'd guess either its

Bit of each, sort of, see my reply to Andy Hall.

Yes, that is what we were after.

We want to set this up for tongue and grooving floorboards, which is always likely to be a requirement in future, so a solid cutter might well do, but will probably go fo the block and buy cutters as required as we go along. Thanks for your reply. Holly

[Holly, in France]

Yes, it's an oldish, circa 1980 workshop/industrial one, 3 phase motor, heavy iron table etc. It's actually a machine a bois combiné in French, would it be called a combi machine in English? We use it only as a planer thicknesser but one can add bits for the spindle moulder, a saw blade and I think it can do something else, can't remember just now and 'im outside is outside.

snip details.......

which took me sometime to manage persuade my computer to download! But thanks, absolutely perfect, and I know someone based near there who is familiar with our machine and will almost certainly know this chap already. Will get onto it tomorrow morning.

Yes, we had all the details of different systems etc in 30mm in a French catalog from

Having searched their website I see that they do actually sell the mounting block "porte outils de securite" with the

50mm diam bore and the cutters for it. Block alone is 188euro ! They also have a block "porte outils multifunctions" for 177 euro so have downloaded the details of that too and we can compare everything with what we come up with tomorrow.

Just in case you are interested, the catalogue for these bits is at:

the line wrap.

No, it's not, machine just lives in our barn, but will check out the hse publication anyway, thanks.

Thanks for your reply about the ryanair luggage business, that's what I thought. Holly

[Andy Hall]

OK.

If you go to the page you list above and scroll down, there is a link to an information page.

Click on "Arbres de 20,30 , 50mm de diametres"

"Arbres" I am sure is not "trees" but probably arbour - in this context, spindle. There is a note that 50mm diameter is a French standard - "diamètre spécifique à la France et largement utilisé dans l'artisanat" . which is what we surmised.

It looks as though 708536 is a 50mm bore (alésage) cutter block, and if it is the same design as the 30mm bore one above, it does have limiters (black coloured pieces paired with each cutter).

Similarly, 708496 on the other page also appears to be 50mm bore.

If you are going to go with these, it would be worth confirming that the cutter sizes and pin spacings are the same as for the 30mm blocks.

From the price perspective, it doesn't look as though there is a huge difference to UK pricing.

[Andy Hall]

If you look at the diameters of the two blocks you mentioned, the 50mm bore one is 120mm overall diameter, whereas the 30mm one is 10mm diameter, which implies the same amount of material in the centre of the block.

I think that it would be pretty unwise to bore out a 30mm block to

50mm, because there would be little left.

You really don't want the tooling disintegrating at 6000rpm......

[Andy Hall]

Up to a point, you can also sharpen the manufactured cutters.

I have a Tormek machine and a jig for it for sharpening spindle moulder cutters and that works very well.

If you are running the same profile a lot, then this may prove economic.

[Andy Hall]

The issue is that the rotating tool, must, according to the machinery regulations (probably the same in France), come to rest within a certain time (IIRC 10 seconds after pressing the stop or emergency stop).

If the block is large and steel, this may not be achievable simply by cutting the power to the machine.

To address this, many machines have electric or electronic braking. Essentially, this usually works by having a box of electronics between the mains power going in and the motor. Then when you press the stop button, the electronics forces a fairly rapid decelleration of the motor to a stop in a few seconds. Some also provide speed control.

e.g.

[Nicholas]

Is that a tormek standard jig or home made? And how does it handle different profiles? I can't imagine how it could ....

Cheers

Nicholas

[Nicholas]

Just had a look at your website. I think that block is 50mm high not 50mm bore. It has a 30mm bore. So it's a modern standard block.

You need to find out the thickness of the spindle that the block is to sit on. My machine has a 1 1/4" bore so I buy blocks for that size spindle.

Get a vernier and pop it on the spindle. Once you have a reading you can then start buying blocks / cutters

Ciao

Nicholas

[Andy Hall]

I thought that for a moment.

The pictures do show a 30mm block (if you click them to enlarge, it says so.)

Yes, some of the blocks are 50mm high as well.

However, there are blocks with 50mm bore also, and there is a reference on the site to 50mm being a French standard.

[Andy Hall]

It's a Tormek jig (SVP-80).

If you look on their web site

you will find it in the "Range of Jigs" page.

There's also a brochure in German (bit I haven't found an English one.

profile doesn't affect sharpening.

[jacob]

If you are doing a lot of t&g then a pair of solid machined cutters would be the thing. One for the tongue and the other for the groove. Expensive but will do lots of work accurately and safely and easier to set up than ordinary cutters. Or a combined cutter which does both, you crank it up or down to bring the tongue or the groove cutter into place. Also essential for long work pieces like floor boards is a power feed. If properly set up you can feed stuff through all day fast and accurately. Without it it's very difficult to put a long board through without the cutter going a bit off line at some point due to inevitable twist in the board or just the weight of it hanging off the edge of the machine and the difficulty in handling it.

cheers

Jacob

[The Natural Philosopher]

A spindle moulder is a large router upside down in a massive table with usually a sliding carriage as well.

Its used to make things like ogee mouldings.

It has a large vertical spindle - in this case 50mm diameter - that does excessive RPM, and onto which is affixed a cutter head,. This is a lump of metal with slots cut into it at an angle, into which you can bolt blades - like planer blades - but blades that are cut to shape - so the whole head and cutters becomes a giant routing cutter if you like. They are large - several inches across - and do enormous RPM, and, if the blades catch a knot when you are standing behind em, will drive a plank of wood right through you.

They are essentially the big brother of the router bit with a ball bearing on it. Except you use a fence rather than the wood itself to guide the part to be shaped.

[The Natural Philosopher]

Blimey. The stuff we used to use in the seventies was square head bolted on no brakes and yes, bloody dangerous.

The foreman demonstrated it by gingerly feeding a strip of scrap into it as it spun down - having checked no one was in the path, and it fired it across the shop floor into a metal mesh barrier placed strategically.

I then got s small wry lecture on never ever disturbing the man on the machine, or walking behind it unless it was silent.

Fantastic tools - we used it with shaped jigs to make guitar necks out of rock (hard) maple - but it needed a lot of care in use. No guard cutters - the boys had three jigs, one for each cut depth, and woe betide if they used the deep cut first.

[The Natural Philosopher]

Ah. That is usually a standard solid cutter, or cutters, and a lot safer than a (removeable) bladed one.

Andy seems to be the most knowledgeable. I'll let him take over. Safety here is a prime concern.

[Andy Dingley]

They do relatively few rpm. The linear speed is high (although not excessive) but because the head is such a large diameter the rpm is pretty low. Usually top speed is about 8k, compared to 20k for a router.

The large cutter head diameter has a few other side-effects. They don't form the "divots" that a small router cutter can do if the pressure against the fence is varied, but neither can they follow tight curves or corners.

That's the shaper, not a spindle moulder. It has a collet chuck, like a router - often 1/2", but it may be 3/4" or 1". Some of these overlap with smaller spindle moulders and are convertible. I've never much liked shapers - they're too slow for turning a small "router size" cutter and giving a good finish, and the tooling is cheaper for spindle moulder knives than for large router cutters.

[Andy Hall]

Although just to confuse, the Americans call a spindle moulder a shaper.....

.. and a planer a jointer

.. and a thicknesser a planer.