Wadkin 4 cutter Advice

[deema]

I have been wondering about adding a Wadkin 4 cutter to my workshop. I have a Sedgwick CP (16") P/T at the moment, and I would like something that will make preparing stuff a lot quicker. I'm getting conflicting views about the Wadkin 4 cutter.
1. It will straighten stuff versus it won't, just planes surfaces.
2. It takes two men to operate, it just takes one.
3. They are very difficult to setup, there no more difficult that a P/T.

Not having used one myself in anger, I'd welcome opinion, suggestion, or recommendations for a machine that the next step up from a P/T.

There seems to be a number I machines around at the moment, is this an indication that they are not very popular / very good?

Separates doesn't help me, as you still have the same number of passes, and changeover isn't an issue for me.

 

[RobinBHM]

General advise re 4 sided planer moulders:

Straightening: they mostly come with straightening tables, but bear in mind there is a compromise between sufficient feed pressure to maintain feed wothout slipping versus a very light feed pressure that straightens, but wont grip enough to push work thtough.

The reality is that for critical work like door stiles, 1 pass to flatten on a surface planer beforehand is worthwhile. No need to do width only thickness. Its still far quicker than separates.

2 men to operate: not really, light stuff can drop on the floor, heavy stuff, feed in and go around and take off. Or make an out feed bench that takes the strsin off the last roller.

Difficult to set up: we have a Weinig 5 head used for par only, takes under a minute to set height, width fences

I would suggest SCM or Weinig for moulders. Wadkin are variable depending on model. They did one moulder with an odd configuration, I would stick with bottom, fence, outside, top layout.

NB: the wadkin PAR machine is not a 4 sider / throughfeed moulder as such, it does 2 cuts per hit so needs feeding through twice. Ive no experience of these machines, but im sure a jump up from separates

We use tct tipped cutters and only do a cutter change every few months.

 

[deema]

Thanks Robin,
It was the twin headed Wadkin I was looking at, I will have a look at those you have suggested.

 

[doctor Bob]

get an SCM sintex XL, with tersa blocks, decent one is about £5000. Great machines.

 

[RobinBHM]

I believe the wadkin par is quite a good machine and they are often on ebay at reasonable prices.

If you machine a fair bit of timber a 4 sider is a fantastic advancement, about 8x faster and work is dead square without any effort. Also a decent machine will remove a lot on each head

Im not sure how they compare to a 4 sider, a halfway house I guess. -they are popular with companies that want the 300mm width, which most 4 siders cant as they arr mostly 170 or 220 width by 125 high

Did you see the Guilliet 4 sider in the for sale section recently?

SCM do good machines and being a large company have good backup even for quite old machines, not that there is much to go wrong.

 

[toolsntat]

General advise re 4 sided planer moulders:

Straightening: they mostly come with straightening tables, but bear in mind there is a compromise between sufficient feed pressure to maintain feed wothout slipping versus a very light feed pressure that straightens, but wont grip enough to push work thtough.

The reality is that for critical work like door stiles, 1 pass to flatten on a surface planer beforehand is worthwhile. No need to do width only thickness. Its still far quicker than separates.

.

When using really bowed stuff I would set the 4 side to 2 side and take off first feed roller pressure, crank up the feed speed and do a quick pass and then re feed on 4 side.
For other stuff I rarely put that first feed roller into play anyway.
Preferring to feed the first section by hand until the next feed roller (after bottom cut) took hold and letting that take it in.
Often when looking through stacks of pse timber at the yards you can almost imagine the operator winding down that first feed pressure and it coming out more or less the same shape it went in #-o

An advisory note on this model of Wadkin 4 sider, it is decidedly TOP HEAVY and will fall over all to easily until fixed down, as those who didn't listen to me once found out :shock: Terrible design fault.
https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=wadki ... SE3u6-M%3A

Cheers
Andy

 

[deema]

Thanks Bob,I will add this to the list. Had a look at auTube videos of the machine and it looks extremely good. Thanks for the heads up.

Robin, thanks for the insights, I missed the Guilliet, I only started to go down this avenue the tiger day after spending two days doing nothing but feeding the PT!

Toolsntat, thanks for the methodology and the warning.

 

[RobinBHM]

You wont look back once you have a 4 sider.

2 days of running timber would take a couple of hours on a 4 sider and a whole lot less tiring.

You need a meaty extractor and a decent power supply as most 4 siders have 6 motors

 

[deema]

Hi Robin
I've a beefy electrical supply, but I will need to upgrade the extractor and main spline of the ducting.......costs just seem to be endless. However, 20 hours on a PT gave me plenty of time to consider the virtues of the upgrade!

 

[doctor Bob]

It is one of the few bits of kit where once you have one you just realise how much time you have wasted in the past.
Seriously a 2 day, 2 man operation becomes a one man 2-3hr operation, everything comes out very square and if you get tersa blocks blade changes are a simple. I have a CP410 PT as well, it very rarely gets used.
I have a 10HP fercell extraction system, I need to make sure most of the other gates for other machines are shut down or it will block very quickly.