Planer - Thicknesser questions - particularly extraction

[Austinisgreat]

Hi to all you good folks,

Newbie poster here. Have learnt lots from reading this forum and have even snapped up a couple of items in the "for sale" section.

Anyhoo. Bought a used P/T off of the evilbay and picked it up yesterday. Record Power PT 320 12" x 8" in good nick and what seemed a decent price.

Thing is, I'd bought a (cheapo) chip and dust extractor from Rutlands some time ago, realising that I'd need one soon enough. But from my first playings around with the P/T the extractor appears to be severely lacking in the suck dep't.

So can any of you chaps (or chapesses) suggest the minimum HP / KW / CuM/min or whatever required to keep the cutterblock on a 12" P/T free from chips? The cheapo I got from Rutlands is 550W and I think rated at 800 CuM / hr. So any recommendations for makes / models / specs or other advice would be appreciated

I do have other associated questions but realise that, a bit like at the doctors nowadays, raising only one issue at a time is probably in line with the "rules".

I make electric guitars for a hobby and wish to get more into general woodworking. The more I've been doing, the more addicted I've become!

Thanks for listening patiently and looking forward to your invaluable advice.

Cheers

Andrew

 

[Austinisgreat]

PS to the Mods.

If I have posted this into the wrong sub-forum then please feel free to move it!

Cheers

Andrew

 

[flh801978]

The more the better for planer/thicknessers
the sucking isnt concentrated very well on a planer so you do need lots and the chips tend to clog very easily
I have a 2 hp on my startrite 12incher and it copes just but only just

Ian

 

[Austinisgreat]

The more the better for planer/thicknessers
the sucking isnt concentrated very well on a planer so you do need lots and the chips tend to clog very easily
I have a 2 hp on my startrite 12incher and it copes just but only just

Ian

Thanks Ian. So 2 HP as a starter (thats about 1.5 KW?) . Do you or does anyone have any specific suggestions for makes or models of chip extractors?

Thanks for reading,

Cheers

Andrew

 

[heimlaga]

You don't need a dust collector to remove the dust from the cutterhead. In the old days the dust was shoveled out from under the machines and that worked too.
What a dust collector does is decreasing the amount of dust in the air and prewenting dust buildup inside the machine. Modern machines are real dust traps because designers assume that everybody have dust collection theese days.

On my old planer thicknesser which had a 10 inch cutterblock I used a Belgian made 1,5 kW dust collector of the ordinary one bag type. I got it secondhand through a barter. It was big enough but I don't remember the make and I am pretty sure they are out of business theese days anyway.
I would think that a 12 inch machine is pretty much the biggest you can run with a 1,5kW dust collector. The next step up would be a 2,2 kW collector with a bigger filter bag or maybe two.

Personally I don't like the cotton filter bags that come with cheap dust collectors. They let all the fine dust through and that fine dust tends to cause some problems in your nose and lungs and all the pipework in between. With some bad luck this could develop into a full blown allergy. Fine airborne dust from some hardwoods also increases the risk of cancer.
In my personal oppinion a filter bag made from thick synthetic felt is the absolute minimum. Sheppach use synthetic felt bads on their collectors. An aftermarket filter cartridge is even better but they cost a lot of money.

 

[John15]

You could ring Record Power and ask which chip collector they recommend for your planer/thicknesser.

John

 

[Austinisgreat]

Thanks for the input and suggestions.

I finally decided the MAIN issue for chip collection from the P/T is air volume and getting as large an airflow as possible was desirable. Wasn't worried about dust as such, all this sub 0.5 micron filtration, can be (and will be) dealt with as a separate issue.

So looking around I found the Axminster FM300SA, at a very good price, offering 2.2KW on a 13A plug, with 3000 CuM/HR airflow. The site said limited stock so not sure if this is an end of line thing? Anyways, ordered one Monday, it arrived today. Two hours of assembly and good to go. Have put quite a bit of stuff through the machine and the chip collector box and the area around the cutterblock are completely free from waste.

Result.

However - this model is a double bag affair and takes up even more space than I imagined! But, its relatively quiet, and the collection bags are huge.

Onlyt time will tell on reliability.

Hope this helps anyone else in a similar quandry.

Cheers

Andrew