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We just bought one of these…..The first thing that happened is that we burned some grooves in the paper. Bad Thing.
Do any of you have one? Do you have this problem of burning belts on shop grade drum sanders? Are we running too fast? Too slow? Too light? Too heavy?
The one I bought is a twin drum. 80 grit up front followed by 120. We were surface sanding white oak door jambs. Dust collector working just fine and feed at about half speed. We backed off and slowed down as much as we could……but……
Thanks,
Ed. Williams
Replies
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Hey ED. - I have a Grizzly double drum sander and it took me a while to learn how to use it. First off, I haven't had much luck using two different grits, although you'd think that would work. I think the problem is that different grits cut at different rates, so if you have the infeed set to optimize the heavier grit, the back one is going too fast, or something like that.
The other main thing I had to realize is that it might take 20 or 25 passes to remove 1/16". It's a sander, not a planer. Think about a belt sander. You can't just take a belt sander and run it in a straight line the length of a board and get much done, right? So these drum sanders are very similar. Many, many passes are what work for me.
Once I got those two ideas straight in my head, I've had great success with my sander and can't imagine not having one. A lot of guys cuss those things, but I love mine.
*Ed; I used to have one in the shutter company I ran. Piece of sh*t. I second everything Jim said (and bear in mind that when there was a big move to abrasive planers, the things were in the fifty hp range. And sucked up a lot of juice, and now they are no more).The Performax is really sensitive to the differential in height settings between drum one and two, and the grits of paper you use have a major impact on this. It's complicated by the crappy mechanisms and scale they use to adjust the drums (unless this has changed); it was impossible to really tell where you were, if you had one of the drums on a slant, etc., and tuning it so you removed the scratch marks from drum 1 without burning up paper was almost impossible. And even when it was working ok, someone would come along and take too deep a cut. What happens then is the heat builds up, the drum isn't big enough for the paper to cool down as it revolves (unlike wide belts), and it glazes, and then burns.We ended up not using the second drum. When I went to buy a small sander for the college I was teaching in, we went with a Woodmaster single drum, which is a much better machine. Timesaver, the biggest name in wide belts, now has a drum sander too which I would look at. Sorry to be so down on Performax, but I hated mine.Oh yeah; when we got a burnt area on the belt, we would put a piece of tape on the top of the sander as a visual indicator of which part of the belt to avoid; those burnt black parts are hard to sand out. And a crepe rubber block is a must.
*Tex and Adman,Thanks for responding. We have a 15" Powermatic surface planer, so I know not to use it as a planer. However, on the second day, we have had better luck. Like you say Tex, I might just not be able to get along without this thing after a while. It's great for surface sanding long or wide boards. Put away the belt sanders in the shop.Adman, so far (in BOTH days of my experience with this thing) after we replaced the factory paper, we have not had a burn. However, you give me mondo insight with the "glaze and burn" remark. I have not seen trouble with the two different grits (two days of experience talking here, mind you), but time will tell. I will try not to run to deep or too slow. I don't want to build up too much heat on the paper.Thanks,Ed.
*well, they were working on improvements, so maybe they are worlds better. How accurate are the depth adjustments for the drums now? They used to just have a scale and a really thick pointer; you could be off by enough to really screw up everything and not even see it.Beware of maple and cherry; I found them to be by far the most difficult to sand, and very hard to avoid burning. The sandpaper manufacturers WERE working hard to develop sandpaper that didn't build up an electrical charge,or got rid of it some how, so you had less swarf (sawdust and abrasive particles) between the drum and the wood and it was easier to collect. I'm out of the loop now, but when you restock your paper, it might be worth asking about. Makes a big difference. VSM were selling me on it big time, if they are in your area.
*Adrian - you used the term "abrasive planers". Is that the generic term for these drum sanders, or what did you mean there?
*in the old days ('70's, '80's maybe...can't remember personally cause I'm only turning nineteen next month), there was a move to honking big sanders that surfaced and dimensioned rough lumber; took the place of at least the planer, and maybe the jointer too. Basically sand your way down to the finished product (there are some good points to the idea too, because you don't have to apply a lot of skill like on a jointer to deal with cupped and twisted lumber). The problem is, it takes a huge amount more energy to do this than to remove the 'extra' wood with razor sharp knives revolving at high speed. So you need like 20-50 hp to do the same job a planer does with 3-5 hp, or whatever. And a phenomenal amount more electricity. i don't know if the energy crisis did them in, or what, but I think they are no more. I never hear of them anyway. The new crop of finish sanders is flatout amazing; you can put a 4 x 8 sheet of ply through, and get a random orbit sanded finish, and the thing constantly indexes off the actual thickness (not the supposed thickness) of the sheet, so no sand through. Blows my mind. You can also get planer/sander combinations, with the planer on the front end, so you get the best of both worlds supposedly.Shoot, now I wish i had a sander. maybe for Christmas.
*Adman,Those sound like some serious machines. The twin sander I bought ran $3500. I don't think I could justify a 4x8 sander. As for the thickness indicator, I don't trust those things anyway.The new paper seems to be doing quite well. (Preformax brand). We've just been sanding white oak now......but have to start a walnut library in a few weeks. We'll see how it does on walnut. I don't think I'd run any teak thourgh it, too oily.Happy Birthday upcoming to you. You're a little older than me by a couple of years.Ed.
*"Shoot, now I wish i had a sander. maybe for Christmas." You know, I think I've seen one you can attatch to your radial arm saw, Adrian. (but I'm not sure how good it'd work under water)Ed. - you ever get one of those Laguna resaws?
*Ed, I have never tried the double drum Performax, but I've had a single drum unit for about 10 years. I use it with all kinds of hardwood and it works fine. I found out that it would burn the belts if you accidentally took too much of a cut and also if your dust collector wasn't really sucking the dust up. I found that to be the biggest problem and have re-piped my system and put gates on the other branches which I close when using the sander. I run everything (even birdseye) through the planer and then give it a few passes through the sander. You can run it at a fast feed rate as long as the cut is not too deep. That's the best way to operate it in my opinion.
*Hey Tex,No, we borrowed a Hitachi but found that it was too small for the job. It was the same size as the Laguna, so I'm glad I didn't buy it to find out it was undersized for the job.We ended up finding a lumber mill in South Dallas who picked up the timbers, re-sawed them, and delivered them back in two days. Can't beat that. My head carpenter on the job found them in the yellow pages of all places.Ed.
*G.We are using a Powermatic single bagger for a dust collection system. I quess we will have to some day pipe up and do it right. For now, we just switch it between the sander and the shaper. The powermatic works great on the shaper, but not so pretty good on the sander. I'm looking into a more powerful dust collector. Any suggestions?Ed.
*Ed, I have a good sized commercial type system so I can't really speak from experience as to the smaller portable units, but it sounds like yours might be a little small for sander dust collection. The problem with collecting dust out of these sanders is that once you are inside the hood of the machine, it is so wide open that you must have a heck of a lot of air flow to get all the dust up. If you are leaving dust on either the work or your moving table, you are not picking enough of it up. Any dust left on the work will certainly cause the type of problem you are experiencing. I'm sure you'll find the best way to operate it for your type of work with a little practice. I still finish everything by hand with Bosch random orbit sanders , but that is a VERY handy tool to have around the shop. Great for working with all kinds of glue ups and especially with different types of birdseye etc. Good Luck ! P.S. How in hell can you guys work in that heat down there! We usually pack it in if it's over 90!
*Hey G.,Thanks for the advice. Yes, we are leaving a lot of dust on the table and the work with the powermatic dust collector. I'm considering getting a more powerful collector just for the drum sander. I'm not sure what the lease on my shop will do next June, so I am hesitant to set up any kind of commercial system. But, I will look into it.The heat down here right now is brutal. We have A/C in the office area, but none in the shop. The temp in the shop sits right on about 100 by the middle of the day. We have many, many fans running, but it's kind of like standing in front of a hair dryer. It's like the "what ya gonna do?" kind of thing. You just work through it and drink lots of water. Things will cool down here in October. Then it's a real pleasure to work in Texas until next July. We have 3500 square feet of shop space, so we do get some air moving around.Cold water by day.....cold beer by night.Ed.
*You sure are right about the heat out here Ed. Placed a thermometer on a post in the center of my shop and by 3:00 PM this afternoon it was reading 101degrees. Had to replace some of my shop roof earlier this spring. The new tin is white and the old tin is galvanized. A customer of mine came in to pick up a bathroom vanity that I built and he brought in a hand held thermometer that you can aim at an item and it displays a digital readout of the temperature. At 10:00 AM, the white roof was reading 98 degrees and the galvanized was 106. First chance I get,I'm replaceing the rest of the roofing.
*My Performax sander is a 16-32.I both love it and hate it. I have also had the glaze-burn problem on cherry, but only when the abrasive strip loosens after a few minutes use. You can take care of this by scraping off the glaze with a dull pocket knife. (If it isn't dull to begin with, it soon will be!) Keep the strip tight. My biggest problem is that when I am making the last couple of passes, the ****** thing will suddenly start to dig in and will trip the circuit breaker. Then I have to crank the adjusting handle up and start over to remove the snipe, which can occur even in the middle of the board. I hope someone can help me solve this problem!
*Old Jim - my Grizzly used to trip it's breaker (integral to the of/on switch) for no apparent reason and I'd have the exact same problem with that frikkin' snipe line somewhere on the board(s). Mine has a resistance dial that I finally figured out how to use to set it so it wouldn't trip as easily.Do you have a magnetic off/on switch? When your's trips, do you have to snap it off and then on two or three times? Not much younger Jim
*Jim, How old is your sander? The problem you describe was classic to the first Performax sanders. Then they came out with a modification that you could install to automatically tension the sanding belt. If you don't have this on your machine , it will continue to do what you describe. If you do have it on, you are either not winding the sanding paper tight enough on the drum to start with or you are loading it into the tensioning device incorrectly. You should not experience the problem you describe.
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We just bought one of these.....The first thing that happened is that we burned some grooves in the paper. Bad Thing.
Do any of you have one? Do you have this problem of burning belts on shop grade drum sanders? Are we running too fast? Too slow? Too light? Too heavy?
The one I bought is a twin drum. 80 grit up front followed by 120. We were surface sanding white oak door jambs. Dust collector working just fine and feed at about half speed. We backed off and slowed down as much as we could......but......
Thanks,
Ed. Williams