So How LOUD is your Planer/Thicknesser Exactly?

[JakeS]

Just how accurate are these phone apps for recording noise levels - something of a gimmick?

It will undoubtedly depend on your phone's electronics as much as anything. For what it's worth the one I tried registered as "whisper" when I was sat in a room with no sources of noise apart from general noise coming in from outside and the laptop fan running; "quiet library" when I was in the kitchen, "traffic" when I was stood out on the drive as some cars went past, and "power tools" when I held it right next to the extractor. So it at least seemed to be in the right class of noise.

 

[sitefive]

To add another data point, my partner was planing some stuff up this afternoon while I'm working from home, so I took the opportunity to measure the noise levels.

The planer is at the front end of the garage, which has a steel door to the outside and a solid door to the inside of the house.
- Just on the house side of the internal door: ~45dB
- Just outside the steel garage door: ~50dB
- Inside the garage, standing close by: ~75dB
- Holding the phone right up next to the planer while it's cutting: ~80dB

The P/T is a Metabo hc260something, and the extractor one of those cheap dustbin ones.

The thing that surprised me is that the noise level doesn't actually change all that much while it's cutting - just the pitch. I guess most of the volume comes from the extractor anyway, that's certainly all I can hear sitting several rooms away from the garage door.

Now I have the noise meter on my phone it's going to be hard to resist measuring my boss while he's on the phone...

Your phone is probably way off...
I measured few days ago for the same HC260 and it was something like
85db while just running a metre from it
and around 100-105db when cutting ,depending how large material you are cutting which is pretty close to the manufacturer data!


Now when I think about my recent 500quid purchase of the HC260 I wish I had gone for the much cheaper ¬150pound titan/erbauer unit as it was around the same ¬100-105db both when running/cutting so the noise def. Isn't that bad as people say, of course the sound is going to be nuts anyways,but kinda sucks now that I spent extra 350 for an unit which is just quiter when not-cutting and does the same job more or less.

 

[JakeS]

Your phone is probably way off...

Or yours is! Probably both, to be honest.

This was while cutting fairly narrow stock - about 50mm across the cutter, so it could possibly get louder.

I quite seriously wouldn't regret getting the Metabo unit, though - I had one of the brush-motored things before, and it is most definitely significantly louder. Regardless of strict dB measurement, the Metabo I can only just hear running with my ear defenders on, but the old brush-motored thing was uncomfortable with the protection. And it wasn't even very big!

 

[RogerP]

.....
I quite seriously wouldn't regret getting the Metabo unit, though - I had one of the brush-motored things before, and it is most definitely significantly louder. Regardless of strict dB measurement, the Metabo I can only just hear running with my ear defenders on, but the old brush-motored thing was uncomfortable with the protection. And it wasn't even very big!

That's neatly sums up what I found too.