I've been eyeing the spiral cutter heads on some of grizzly's jointers and planers. At first glance, I really like the idea. But they're so much more expensive. Does anyone have one of these machines and would you say that it was worth the extra expense?
brian
I have a twenty inch shop Fox planer with conventional blades and a friend just bought the same machine with the spiral cutter head and it's far superior. No tear out on curly grain and a cut that needs finish sanding only. I think I can do a lot of sanding for the extra thousand dollars it cost though.
if you do a lot of figured woods or work a lot of tropicals they can be. tropicals plane better then domestic woos but they dull the blades faster.
" Eagles may soar, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines"
My son uses one in the shop where he works. The little cutter heads are
4 sided and when they get dull, they get a couple of technicians to come in and rotate all the cutters 1/4 turn. It takes hours to do it right and hours=dollars.
Hours? How big is the jointer?
I've seen some 12" rotary cutter head jointers that the cutters locked into each slot. The whole process is simply loosening a screw turning the cutter and retightening it, no skill involved. One of the selling points for the rotary head is that unskilled people can fix a knicked blade.
Are you sure the outside tech's aren't doing other things to the machine, like a full tune / lube / belt replacement service?
Barry
What is zero tearout worth to you? Edge jointing curly maple with *no* tearout. I had a chance for the first time a few weeks ago to use a General (CDN Made) 8" jointer with a helical carbide insert head and it blew me away. When I get the money, I will be putting a helical cutterhead on my DJ-30.
David.
Dave
Gotta ask, WHO makes a drop in replacement spiral cutter head for the DJ30???
John
What kind of machine? If you are comparing a big industrial unit against the Grizzly, this would be misleading. I just don't think Grizzly has a team of technicians wandering around your town to adjust cutter heads.
OTOH, the planer/jointer where I buy my wood I can believe it. Motor is about 35 hp and will take 24" wide stock easily removing 1/2" or more at a pass and doing both sides at the same time. It has a series of helical cutters. Ed
On Sat, 26 Jun 2004 15:52:17 -0500, John vaguely proposed a theory ......and in reply I say!:
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Looking at the Grizzly website it says "indexable carbide inserts". To me it sounds like there is a detente that would allow them to be easily aligned. Seems a whole lot easier than changing 4 traditional knives and getting them all aligned (something I still haven't attempted on my G0500 even though it is probably time.)
Montyhp
>I have a 18in Woodmaster planer, and noticed that they want MORE for the spiral head for the WoodMaster than I paid for the entire WoodMaster package (planer, sander, molding head, etc.) Better be one HECK of an improvement for $2000+ to move to spiral cutter head
John
If the price for the DJ30 head is comparable to what they want for a head for my WoodMaster, that turns the DJ30 into a $5000+ jointer
John
Thanks everyone for you input. It's a hard decision when the 12" jointer can be had for the same price as the 8" with the spiral cutter head. Sounds like it's worth it though.
brian
FYI I've had the spiral head G0543 (8") on backorder since March, and the current ETA is September :-(
Eyeballing is about all you can do with them at the moment.
axis, they can't make a flat surface (the cutter corners are slightly futher away from the center of rotation than the center of the faces; they should make shallow beads and leave lines on the wood). Can anyone explain what they were thinking, and/or how this really works?
says "reduces lines" - not eliminate them. The question is, do they grind such that the entire cutting edge is equidistant from the axis? They don't say.
This worried me also:
brian
That's not the cutter the G0543 uses, though. Maybe they're for a previous model? The spiral head cutters are new, and they've been increasing the number of models with them over the years (you can get a 6" spiral jointer now too).
In fact, the G9961 calls for H5307 cutters in the 2004 catalog, not the H2334 you link to. I suspect they've just been upgraded.
As for the 8" spiral jointer, the folks at Grizzly say they haven't even started getting them in yet, so I doubt they'll be discontinuing them yet ;-)
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