I'm delurking to tell of my experience purchasing and installing a Jet 16" planer. I've been wanting a 15" planer to relieve my severely abused 12 1/2" Delta planer. I finally had the money set aside and went looking for a Jet
15". I was surprised to find a new 16" that was cheaper! I ordered it from Tool King and expected delivery sometime in the next decade as the standard freight charge was only $7.99. That freight charge was from Colorado to Kentucky! Much to my amazement the crate arrived 10 days later; all 534 lbs of it!The open stand went together easily and all of the holes aligned perfectly. Parts were well protected and no nicks or chips. All of the bolts, washers, and nuts were separated in teeny-tiny Ziploc bags....nice touch. Metric open-end wrenches and "Allen" wrenches were included. A friend had to help lift the planer unit/motor onto the base........very heavy!!! Steel rods slide out of the base casting for use as handles to lift the unit.....another nice touch. The 230 VAC power cord was too short and no plug is included. I installed a longer 12 gauge cord and 20 amp twist-lock plug.
Mounting and alligning the infeed and outfeed roller assemblies was a test in patience. Had to pull up a chair and go through a trial and error process that took about 1/2 hour for the first set of rollers. It required a bit of tapping with a mallet and many turns of the three bolt/three set-screw design to finally get the allignment of rollers with the bed. The other set went much better.
The manual recommends adjusting two rollers in the bed up for rough-material and down (almost flush with the bed) for smooth material. The range of adjustment is from 0 (flush with the bed) to .006" up for roughest material. The factory setting is .004" and the procedure to adjust the two rollers looks to be tedious. I'm hoping that I won't find it necessary to change the setting. It would be a PITA to adjust them every time I was running a bunch of rough-sawn then had to adjust when the rough was smoothed.
It became obvious that my puny Rigid dust collector couldn't handle the chip volume when I fired the sucker up and ran a 12" rough-sawn piece of oak through. A dust collector is absolutely necessary. The planer has 2 feed-speeds and the faster speed handled the oak with ease. It took off wood that would have taken 3 passes on the Delta 12 1/2". The dust collector's 4" hose plugged immediately, ergo I bought and installed a Jet 1100 CFM dust collector last night. So much for saving $.
I've had to do a major reorg of my garage-shop (no room for a car) to fit the planer in, but it will be worth it as I have mucho rough-sawn lumber; a big benefit of living in rural Kentucky.
Overall I'm very pleased with the planer and recommend it.
Jim