New Tools Arrived!!!!

[Dana Vogel]

Beautiful machinery, I really believe combo machines are the way to go, much less space required.

Enjoy your new equipment, Dana

[John Harden]

Beautiful machinery, I really believe combo machines are the way to go, much less space required.

Enjoy your new equipment, Dana

Thanks. At first, I was looking to get a full combo, but didn't want the J/P always hanging out there on the right side. Having two seperate combos is the best of both worlds, as you can place them side by side if you want, or keep them seperated, as mine are. Technically, you can seperate Felder full combos by unbolting the J/P, but it is clunky as you still have an "umbilical" back to the saw and the main power switch. Folks do it, but Felder recommend seperate units over this approach.

Finally got the dust piping hooked up. 6" main lines drop to 5" at the machines. Fired off the planer and it planed down a 14" wide, 8/4 mahogany plank buttery smooth with no snipe.

Switched to the jointer and it jointed an amazingly nice, sharply convex curve onto an already flat board. Scratched my head and figured it needed calibration. As I walked away the light bulb came on. Went back, locked down the tables with the ratcheting handles and tried again. Nice and straight. Doh!!!!!!

Regards,

John

[Chris Tsutsui]

Wow John, you have better hobby equipment than most small business professionals.

Each weekend I visit the inlaws and they are a stone throw away from the speedway. I can hear the race cars if I go outside.

Now I know that if I go outside it might not be the race cars, it might be you woodworking... jk

I agree with you that two 2-1 combos is better than a single 4-1 combo, though I know the machines arn't that much different so do you think it's possible to separate the J/P from the slider/shaper if they got the 4-1 combo? Then you can have separates or decide later to combine the machines? That would be pretty versatile if Felder designed them that way.

[John Harden]

Wow John, you have better hobby equipment than most small business professionals.

Each weekend I visit the inlaws and they are a stone throw away from the speedway. I can hear the race cars if I go outside.

Now I know that if I go outside it might not be the race cars, it might be you woodworking... jk

I agree with you that two 2-1 combos is better than a single 4-1 combo, though I know the machines arn't that much different so do you think it's possible to separate the J/P from the slider/shaper if they got the 4-1 combo? Then you can have separates or decide later to combine the machines? That would be pretty versatile if Felder designed them that way.

Chris, you're welcome to come by and check them out next time you're out my way. I'm only a few miles from the Speedway. The J/P isn't any noiser than any other I've heard. The saw, however is pretty noisy with the 12" blade at full height and full speed. I'm using the Felder industrial combo blade. May switch to a WWII or a Tenryu. FOG folks who have both say they're much quieter.

I wouldn't necessarily say two seperates are better, only different. For a shop with limited space and only one woodworker a 4:1 would be far better.

From what I understand, you can unbolt the J/P from the full 741 combo. However, you need to have an electrical connection back to the main cabinet as this is where the main control panel is. Essentially, when you turn the main selector/power switch on the saw cabinet to the J/P position, it has to have some way to talk to the J/P and tell it to fire up its motor. Make sense?

There are other differences as well. Rip fence on saw/shaper is very different than combo and is off the monster 900 series Felder. Very nice. On the full combo, the saw and J/P share a fence so you have to move the heavy thing back and forth. Easy if you're Sep from the Felder video, not so much if you're 5'9" me. Jointer tables are longer on seperates too. Mine are 78" without extensions. I think the combo ones are 68" or so. Can't remember for sure, though this really isn't an issue as the extensions are incredibly easy to install and very robust.

On the downside, the seperates cost a lot more.

Regards,

John

[Rod Sheridan]

Switched to the jointer and it jointed an amazingly nice, sharply convex curve onto an already flat board. Scratched my head and figured it needed calibration. As I walked away the light bulb came on. Went back, locked down the tables with the ratcheting handles and tried again. Nice and straight. Doh!!!!!!

Regards,

John

It's nice to know that I'm not the only person who has done that!.

Regards, Rod.

[Rod Sheridan]

[QUOTE=Chris Tsutsui;1258916]Wow John, you have better hobby equipment than most small business professionals.

Says the guy who recently became the owner of an A3-31.

Have you had it running yet Chris?


Regards, Rod.

[John Harden]

It's nice to know that I'm not the only person who has done that!.

Regards, Rod.

You know the upside is that if we ever have to make long clamping cauls or some such thing, we have a reliably fast way to form a smooth, convex shape!!!!

[Chris Tsutsui]

[QUOTE=Rod Sheridan;1258953]

Wow John, you have better hobby equipment than most small business professionals.

Says the guy who recently became the owner of an A3-31.

Have you had it running yet Chris?


Regards, Rod.

Sorry for the late reply, I left work Friday evening before I had read this.

Anyways, the A3 31 is up and running. Thanks John for the email on setting it up.

I've got it setup perfect right now so time will tell if it stays dialed in.

With an 8/4 hard maple board as a test sample, I jointed it 2 sides, checked it with a machinist square and it was perfect. (While the unjointed version was not square of course)

Then I ran it through the planer with 3 passes removing about a half MM removed with each pass.

The result was that I took two calipers, one mitutoyo dial caliper that has been calibrated and accurate to 0.0001". I checked all four corners and several other places and each measurement of thickness was within a tolerance of +/- 0.0001"

This is far more accurate than I expected.

The blades are indeed truly quick swap for without adjustment, all of the blades were level.

The adjustments I had to make to get the machine dialed in perfect was I had to make the fence 90 degrees to the bed, then I had to adjust the infeed table so it was level with the blades. The blades were already level with the outfeed table so that was nice.

The A3 31 powered through a 6" wide board without bogging down at all unlike my 6" delta deluxe jointer which you can feel the motor slightly decrease in RPM.

The cut quality with the STOCK chrome steel blades seemed ok and similar to the delta. I'm just glad there was no snipe at all and I can't wait to get some longer lasting cobalt blades.

Overall I'm very impressed with the dust collection, even if it's mated to abudget HF 2hp DC that sucked all of the chips and dust perfectly fine catching probably almost 99% of the chips and dust.

[Brian Peters]

Wow.. jealous. Love the machinery. I won't dare ask how much you paid for it but would you mind spilling how much the freight was for something like that? I have a new tool coming and now it won't be as exciting after seeing this thread.

[Rod Sheridan]

Sounds good Chris, I replaced the stock blades with the cobalt models as well.

It is the first planer I've used that has zero snipe, what a treat.

I normally take a roughing pass of 1 to 1.5mm and it does that without effort on hardwoods about 10" in width.

I just have to remember to hold the start button until the planer is up to speed, I guess it's the Felder/Hammer secret handshake for single phase machines.

regards, Rod.

[John Harden]

Wow.. jealous. Love the machinery. I won't dare ask how much you paid for it but would you mind spilling how much the freight was for something like that? I have a new tool coming and now it won't be as exciting after seeing this thread.

Brian, I think shipping was about $1200 from Austria. Not bad for four pallets. I also paid $450 to a local trucking company to go pick them up and deliver them to my house. That was a bargain as he spent about three hours at my house helping me unbolt them from the pallets, installing the mobility kits and nudging them up into my garage. He definitely earned his money that day.

Regards,

John

[Chris Tsutsui]

It's nice to know that I'm not the only person who has done that!.

Regards, Rod.

Rod and John,

Here's a tip for my machine.

When I first setup the outfeed table, I rotated the cutter blade so it was out of the way and leveled the infeed with the outfeed table by using a straight edge. Now both infeed and outfeed table should be level with eachother and you should NOT have tightened the tables down.

If you find that after tightening down the knobs LOWERS the infeed side of the table, then you could use some adjustment on the "two round head bolts" that the infeed jointer table lands on when it swings down on the hinges.

Drop the infeed table down and from underneath the table, use a feeler gauge and measure the gap above each of the two round head bolt stops when the infeed table is down. Make sure the table is NOT tightened down when you measure. (If you don't have a feeler gauge you can use a thin piece of paper)

Then lift the outfeed table again and adjust the bolt height that was too low. Drop the table down again and measure again until both sides are exactly the same.

NOW that these two stops have been adjusted to touch the outfeed table equally, you can tighten down the table and it doens't affect the outfeed table's height giving you more consistenncy no matter HOW hard you tighten the tables down.

Hence, if you forget to tighten the table down, you should still get a true cut. heh

[Stephen Edwards]

Congratulations on your new machines! Here's wishing you many years of enjoyable service from your fine machines.

Best Regards,

[Rod Sheridan]

Rod and John,

Here's a tip for my machine.

Chris, thanks for taking the trouble to post that, however that wasn't the cause of my problem.

I had a wood chip lodged on the table.........The fix was pretty easy

Regards, Rod.

[Jeff Monson]

Chris, Thats a great tip, my a3-31 infeed table moves slightly when I tighten down the lock handle, sounds like an easy fix!!!