One of the local turners has a Performax sander and kindly handled my immediate need to clean up a couple of sections of glued up bowl segments.
I earlier asked about plans for a thickness sander. It occurs to me that one approach might be to get an old planer (plentiful on CL) and swap out the cutter head with a home built sanding drum. Maybe just remove the blades and wrap some sandpaper around the head.
Easy, right?
Wouldn't the speed be way too fast?
Feed speed would absolutely bee too fast, about 5 times too fast on the slow setting.
My SWAG is that the motor drives the feed belt and the planer head simultaneously, achieving different speeds through the size of the pulleys. Would it be possible to reduce the feed rate by changing the diameter of the pulley (assuming all that stuff is accessible)?
Typically the cutter head is driven by belts, the feed drive is driven by a chain. You will have to locate different sized sprockets and different length chain, and this is assuming that all of this will still fit inside the housing.
Add to that most all better drum sanders have a variable speed in feed. Depending on the hardness and width of the board you will want to use different feed rates to help guard against burning the wood.
Depends on what planer you're starting with...I'd have to look up the parts diagrams on the little lunchbox guys that are prevalent if that's what you're thinking of; the more bigger guys have a variable (or at least two-speed drive mechanism for the feed rollers while the cutterhead is fixed.
Just looking at some spec's, the Performax is 5" drum at 1700 rpm; the
13" little Delta is 2" cutterhead at 10000 rpm.So you'd need about a 2.5:1 reduction in cutterhead rpm to get the surface speed roughly equivalent.
A more readily adaptable mechanism would be more like the Grizz or similar--let's see the 15" G0453 is 3" at 5000 rpm -- more like it.
But still 2:1, roughly.
The feed speed on the Performax is 0-12 fpm, the Grizz 16/30 fpm so the slowest is 16/12=1.333X the fastest as well.
The ideas are similar but the scales are such it would be a pretty significant modification.
Besides the speed issues, the small diameter cutter head means a much smaller contact area for the paper which is also worse for burning the work and likelihood of tearing paper, etc...and if you make the head larger to counteract that, you make the speed problem even worse, of course.
Wouldn't say it's impossible; just going to be a lot of work for a questionable result, probably...
DGB ...
Thanks for the thoughtful reply. Yes, I was going to use a little Delta. The obstacles you set forth are just enough to push me back to my original thought of building my own.
Larry
I think a new tool might be better money spent.
Jet bought the Performax sander line and they still produce the 16-32 model that sells for under $1,000.
I would certainly start looking around at all the online flea markets. I see those tools coming up for sale quite often.
The usual suspects like Craigs List and Ebay would be a start.
Seems to be at or above $1000 when I look online. But the 10-20 is still around $700. I bought one of those and am happy with it.
The last I got quoted by my local guys "was" $930, which barely under $1,000. I forgot about the 10-20, which is a pretty good deal.
I have often wondered about the actual sandpaper cost of these machines . I guess it should be mentioned that a "required" DC unit is necessary.
The other problem for me is the lack of a real Jet dealer network. You rarely even see Jet products in stores any more, but that might be regional thing.
I've been using mine mostly as a planer for highly figured woods. So I probably use a sandpaper roll far longer than I should. Besides, they're a pain to change. I'm just a hobbyist so I don't use the machine heavily, but so far I have no complaints about sandpaper cost.
Boy, is a dust collector required! There's also a lot of dust left inside when you're done. An air hose or a vacuum with a tiny pickup is needed to clean that dust out. There's a lot that gets trapped inside the drum - I don't know why.
I don't know where you're at, but Woodcraft carries Jet. That's where I got my 10-20.
The nearest Woodcraft for me is in Raleigh, N.C., which is a
150 mile ride....I'm at the NC-SC state line on the coast.
I used to drive my mother from New Bern, NC to Raleigh a couple times a month. Raleigh and Cary have her kind of shopping malls. I can't complain, I always got a good meal or two out of the drive.
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