Planner Set up

[Chris]

Just received my new planer, a Grizzly 20" G1033X. Well I had a Dewalt before this & never adjusted anything, just popped in the blades & away we go. Now I have to check the height of the infeed roller, outfeed roller, bed rollers, chip breaker, pressure bar!! I'm glad to have it, but it's a bit daunting at 1st. So while reading the manual they say all these were set at the factory but to check them. Haven't yet but I will as I hear a bit of chattering. Grizzly says the infeed,outfeed roller, chip breaker & pressure bar should all be 0.040" below the DBC of the blade arc. I happened to Google the set up & found a great video stream. I found this very helpful, a guy called Bob Vaughan, it looks old, but still very informative. He claims the pressure bar should be -0.003 & the others should be about 0.32.

my question is what are your experiences? Have you checked & measured all this in your machines and do you keep your pressure bar a tad shy of the DBC of the blade arc? Could something have changed that makes the Grizzly manual correct to keep them all the same? Would you adjust them to 0.40 or Vaughan's recommended 0.32?

Thx, Chris

[SonomaProducts.com]

I spent a lot of time trying to get this same unit to run well. It was the older straight cutter and different control box style but. It was new just a few years ago, so likely the same manual. As I recall, the manual had you make these little wood blocks that cleared the lower rollers and gave you a surface for measuring the upper rollers. We couldn't get the thing to feed reasonably no matter how we adjusted it. The cutting was always good regardless of how we tweaked it but the feed always stalled. Finally we found that the outfeed roller was badly bent. It had an arc of almost an 1/8" at the center. Griz sent out a new roller no questions asked.

I reset everything to the factory settings as defined in the manual and once we had the true outfeed roller mounted, it ran like a champ.

The big problem with these style planners is the bed rollers. If you are running rough stock you need to jack them up, but you get more snipe. For fairly smooth stock you can get them real close to the bed and get a good feed. The problem is they are adjusted with an ecentric bushing at the end of the roller and a set screw. The screw either slips easy or digs in and creates a dentent so you pretty much have to leave them set in one place once it digs in. Steel city is the only ones who have tried to adress this on this design and they added a little wing to the end of the roller to make it easier to roll the roller to adjust the eccentric but they still use the same set screw.

I always wanted to try and get some of that slippery white stock (phenolic?) and drop the bed rollers down and replace it with the flat plastic base. This is what I have in my 18" Woodmaster and when it is setup as a planer I can run 12" wide all day long. Of course it has a

7 1/2 lesson moter but the feed motor is nothing special and it feeds flawless.

Let me know if you have any other questions I spent a lot of time with this baby.

[Chris]

Really appreciate the feed back. I'll work to the factory specs. Down with the flu today, but I might get out to the cold garage to start. Thanks again. I do have another question though. Since I got this machine I've read a few times from different sources about the bed rollers & setting them by whether you plane rough or smooth stock. This is news to me, It sounds like people would plane rough lumber if they don't have a jointer or their jointer is too small? I've ran wide board thru that had a cup in them as I could run them cup down , get a smooth top & flip them, but it sounds to me that this is a wide spread & normal practice?

Chris

I reset everything to the factory settings as defined in the manual and once we had the true outfeed roller mounted, it ran like a champ.

The big problem with these style planners is the bed rollers. If you are running rough stock you need to jack them up, but you get more snipe. For fairly smooth stock you can get them real close to the bed and get a good feed. The problem is they are adjusted with an ecentric bushing at the end of the roller and a set screw. The screw either slips easy or digs in and creates a dentent so you pretty much have to leave them set in one place once it digs in. Steel city is the only ones who have tried to adress this on this design and they added a little wing to the end of the roller to make it easier to roll the roller to adjust the eccentric but they still use the same set screw.

I always wanted to try and get some of that slippery white stock (phenolic?) and drop the bed rollers down and replace it with the flat plastic base. This is what I have in my 18" Woodmaster and when it is setup as a planer I can run 12" wide all day long. Of course it has a

7 1/2 lesson moter but the feed motor is nothing special and it feeds flawless.

Let me know if you have any other questions I spent a lot of time with this baby.

[SonomaProducts.com]

Very astute. Yesw, "normally" one would always have a smooth side down if following best practice of flattening one side on the jointer and then parallel-izing and thicknessing on the planer.

1. Yep, wide boards, too wide for the jointer are one item that gets planned rough.
2. Really long boards that are a hassle to joint.
3. High production with less attention to such details as parallel faces.

In a production shop you oft time take short cuts. Also, If I get a rough wide board and I want to keep it wide, then into the planner it goes, as is. I am not going to smooth one side with a hand plane or some router trick. If it was out of parallel so far that I could notice or cupped I might concern myself. If I am breaking it down to glue up a panel, I might use one face as the reference for all TS cuts, but generally you just run with it assuming it is parallel enough.

No, I wouldn't do this for a fine, single piece of furniture but I would crank out 50 drawer fronts or a bunch of stick for face frames, etc.

So assuming you will normally use proper technique, lock those bed rollers in at the low end of the suggested setting to minimize the snipe and you will be fine.

Hope you fell better. I have been avoiding any colds or flus this season, even with the sickening snuffing and glurping sounds of the guy I an working near for the past few weeks. I wish he would just stay home.