Infeed roller on old Makita

[Willie the Rack Boy]

Any one got info on changing the urethane rollers on an older 15" Makita planer? Any help appreciated. Thinking of turning metal ones as one possibility. TIA Steve

[Mike Hide]

Had the same problem with mine . I would not recommend metal ones as metal one will marr the surface when taking fine cuts . I enquired about new ones thw Makita salesman told me they were expensive and to try a local roller company .I did champion roll is the local roller company here and they will resurface roller for about $125 each and with a bettercomposion than the originals .

Most large cities have roller companies [many service the printing industry]...mjh

[Luigi Zanasi]

On Fri, 16 Jan 2004 03:54:02 GMT, "Willie the Rack Boy" scribbled:

If it's a 2040 400mm planer, Makita has the owner's manual on line:

rollers are a real bitch to adjust and/or remove. DAMHIKT. I haven't played with in quite a few years, so I'm going from memory. first you need to remove the spring loaded height adjustment stuff from the top and then remove the screw holding the square bearing under the roller. There is a height-adjusting screw at the top, which screws into a cylindrical thing that holds the spring. You have to remove the screw and then fashion some kind of really wide screwdriver to remove the other thingie. On my planer, everything was jammed together, and was really difficult to unscrew, either because they used some locking stuff, or the steel was stuck to the aluminium. Once you remove the height adjustment stuff (careful, it's spring loaded), the rollers come off easily.

BTW, I wouldn't make them out of metal, as you need quite a bit of friction to propel the wood forward. Metal feed rollers on other planers are corrugated. Maybe you could turn down the existing rollers just enough to remove the glaze and uneven spots.

Have fun.

Luigi Note the new email address. Please adjust your krillfiles (tmAD) accordingly Replace "nonet" with "yukonomics" for real email address